


Not Fish Food

by Ledaeus



Series: Greater Virtues of Criminality [2]
Category: Thief (Video Game 2014), Thief (Video Games)
Genre: Angst, Basso is the friend we all need, Death, Execution, Fire, Garrett finally gets his hand sorted out, Gen, Hanging, Headaches & Migraines, Mentions of Corvo Attano - Freeform, Mentions of other major characters in Thief, More angst, Original Character(s), Post-Thief 2014, This isn't a happy series, Whump, mentions of cannibalism, the mechanical eye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-16 15:23:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 29,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17552213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ledaeus/pseuds/Ledaeus
Summary: It's been only hours since Garrett saw Erin apparently plummeting to her death, but already things are changing in the Eternal City. The powers that be are shifting and clashing in violent, destructive skirmishes. Garrett needs to regain his footing and find his place in this new world.





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _What had he been doing to get himself into this mess? Why had he woken up hanging off the edge of what looked like a wrecked ship? Given a couple more inches and the balance would have tipped, he would have tumbled into the briny sea below, been killed by the jutting wreckage that had collapsed and settled there. The thought made his stomach turn. Falling from such a height would have torn him limb-from-limb and scattered him in the wind like ashes, nothing more than fish food; bloated, floating, sinking, feeding._
> 
> Recently the City has been a busy place. Ideas and visions of progress and the future have been springing out of the ground only to return there within months, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Garrett has been caught up in the most central workings of the plans of the Elite, and needs to find his own way after a week of turmoil. 
> 
> His attempts at finding Erin have left him empty-handed. Too many people are dead as a result of Orion and Elias Northcrest's actions. Garrett just wants to figure out how to make things normal again.

A faint glimmer of sun and a bright flash of morning light off muddy water were enough to rouse him.

Erin’s pleading scream.

The organic humming and snapping of the Primal.

Throbbing bolts of pain lanced periodically through to the back of his right eyeball where they thrummed and wrapped sickening agony around the side of his head. He groaned. Sank back into darkness.

Garrett laid there for what could have been minutes and what could have been hours, drifting in and out of consciousness before it was drawn from his chest, unwilling to open his eyes but feeling compelled to do so anyway. His hand contracted reflexively, he emitted a short sigh and allowed himself the luxury of a low moan before propping himself up onto aching elbows, pitched himself to his feet, knees wobbling where he stood, gripping onto a nearby post. His knuckles whitened as he tightened his grip and his heart fluttered with what might have been unease, or physical exhaustion, or the migraine that had failed to dissipate while he had been asleep on the floor.

What had he been doing to get himself into this mess? Why had he woken up hanging off the edge of what looked like a wrecked ship? Given a couple more inches and the balance would have tipped, he would have tumbled into the briny sea below, been killed by the jutting wreckage that had collapsed and settled there. The thought made his stomach turn. Falling from such a height would have torn him limb-from-limb and scattered him in the wind like ashes, nothing more than fish food; bloated, floating, sinking, feeding.

Erin.

Erin was gone.

He had let her go. She had been so close; had been well within his clutches once again, close enough to grab and haul back from the Primal’s maw, close enough for him to feel her breath on his cheek and bear the vibrations from her screams echoing up his arm and into his shoulder.

_Garrett!_

He had let her slip away again.

_Garrett, I’m slipping!_

He bent double clutching his head as a fresh round of pain smacked him from the side like the curl of a wave and he steadied himself on the post.

_The claw, give me the claw!_

The claw?

He slid his forearm up the post where he stood and it came to rest just below the tool which had embedded itself in the rotten, warped wood, leaving splinters scattered at the foot. He chanced a second or two to push himself back onto his feet as he reached out with his other hand and _twisted_ , working at the waterlogged mess beneath until there was some give, and he pulled it away, turned it over in his hands, studying it intently, then retracted it, slipped it into a pocket on his belt for safekeeping.

_Garrett!_

He had utterly, utterly failed to protect her in just about every conceivable way, and now she was gone. Again.

Dreams and reality swam together as he searched his mind for an indication as to what had happened during the night. He _had_ thrown her the claw, he was _sure_ of that, like he should have done on that night one year previously, but if he had…

Then why was it up here, embedded in what remained of Orion’s ship - Dawn’s Light - and not at the bottom of the ocean? Had she thrown it? Unlikely, when she had been falling through the air, and why would she have asked Garrett to pass her it only to throw it away again?

Thoughts clamoured as memories came racing back to meet him in tune with the throbbing behind his eye. Orion was dead. Erin was missing. Whether the chapel many floors above was still standing was anyone’s guess at this point, and it wasn’t within his field of view anyway. The departed, white and slimy and sickly, like in Moira…

Thadeus Harlan.

No. He didn’t want to think about that. _He wasn’t going to think about that._ The thought made him nauseous, bubbled and roiled sickly sweet in his gut, so he blocked it out. Thought of Erin instead. Thought of what had happened.

Turning, he looked out over the sea, raking his eyes back and forth for some evidence of her, some shock of short black hair or a flash of white dress bobbing in the water, _anything_ that would give away what had happened to her, but the waves yielded nothing, lapped back and forth at the wreckage some distance out and directly below, reflected the dirty brown fog of the midsummer morning and carried what were - had been - members of Orion’s Graven and the departed that Erin had _turned_ when he’d been fighting to draw the Primal that was slowly devouring her. None of them were her, that was plainly obvious, but whether that gave any indication of her fate was another question. 

Judging by the chill in the air and what light filtered through the clouds, it was early morning. He had been passed out for some time now, hours probably, and he could _feel_ it. His entire body ached. The sea salt felt like it had collected and crystalised around the back of his throat into sharp, hard little nodes and slicked his tongue, forcing him to swallow trying to banish the harsh dryness, and he spat the worst of it into the sea below. 

He surveyed the rest of his surroundings.

No evidence as to what Erin’s demise had been there, either. Just a lot of poorly-constructed decking that was unstable at best, buckled and threatened to collapse underneath him, sagging planks, coils of rope and stray nails. He would be lucky to find any sort of evidence here. He considered calling out her name, but even then, would she reply? Or would he just be advertising his position to those who wished him harm; watchmen, Graven, departed?

So much could go so wrong here. He needed to move. He risked a couple more minutes, scanning the horizon one final time for evidence of Erin and then bailed, turned around and scaled some of the nearby wreckage, finding high ground and safety, searching for evidence of departed as he went, paying close attention to his visibility from the outside of the ship as well as the amount of noise he made in the process. The Watch were beginning to swarm at the entrance to the ship, having worked their way down through the chapel of the old gods that stood just above it, and few Graven lay dead at their feet. Garrett looked on in disgust, but felt no other emotion for those who had also wanted him dead, then moved on, pushed through the wreckage and up through what remained of the chapel, found himself out on the other side. How long would it be before they found the General’s body?

He wasn’t sure whether he had expected this, but there were hundreds of watchmen here too, out in full force, rounding up members of the Graven like cattle. Garrett slipped into the shadow and waited as a group of maybe three or four were lined up against the opposite wall and executed point blank on the spot by crossbowmen leaving blood spattered on the wall behind, bodies crumpled to the floor in a heap. He turned his head. He didn’t want to see. 

Not that he was any better. The thought bubbled up to his mind again despite his protestations.

He had murdered Thadeus in cold blood. Hated him for everything that he had done to him; Basso, his hand, what little remained of his sense of safety, all the vile things he had done back in the foundry, the attempts on his life, _the plot with Corvo._ He had ruined it all. And in that moment, he had lost control. Driven the claw deep into his throat and withdrawn sharply when Thadeus’s hand closed painfully around his wrist, then stepped back and kicked him to the ground. He wished he could say that he didn’t remember it, but that would be a lie.

All Garrett saw was Thadeus bleeding out on the floor with the Graven, calling out for their mothers. He did not see the hole in his own hand, or Corvo’s betrayed eyes. He did not see Cornelius’s mutilated body, or the watchman whose head he had split open back in the foundry, nor the Blossom he had abused so mercilessly. 

Garrett only saw a man who was scared of death.

And he hated himself for it.

Thadeus had deserved it. _He deserved to die._ He had been a danger to Garrett’s life, possibly Basso’s, and eventually it would have descended into a life-or-death situation - one he might not have been able to weasel his way out of.

No.

Who was he kidding?

He couldn’t justify it. He couldn’t justify gutting a man - a disgusting excuse for a man, but a man nonetheless - and leaving him to die. He couldn’t do it. _He couldn’t._

_What would Basso think?_

One of the dying Graven caught his eye, and they locked gazes for a moment; only until the light drained from them and Garrett was left staring into dull, dilated pupils, watching his own reflection stare back at him with a shocked expression. The watch officers had gone by now, leaving them alone in the alley which already stank, reeked of iron and shit and fear, and Garrett hid half-shrouded in a gutter with broken grating, the smell of rats floating up from the depths and mingling with the air up above. Blood pooled in the cobbles and mixed with the grime that lay there. 

It was time to move on.

He slipped back out and looked up, orientating himself with the clocktower rising above the orange glow of the City and honed in, dipping through side streets, swinging himself up to one of the higher levels, steadying himself on the beams above the streets, one gloved hand down for balance. Even though it was day time, the warm glow of fire could be seen above some of the houses if he craned and stared up towards the roofs, the sound of screaming all too audible from both Auldale and the remains of Dawn’s Light.

The thudding pain behind his right eye was still painful. Excruciating. It had been bad since he woke up on the ship, but now he could barely see. Burnt patches smothered his vision, and with each explosion that sounded in the distance, each new column of smoke that licked up into the sky, each and every stray piece of rubble that exploded into the air and fell back to the ground where they shattered into a million tiny pieces, he became more certain that his head was about to split in two. 

He had been having them since he had woken up in the cart over a week ago, but none of them had been as bad as it was now. He gripped onto the beam beneath his feet and took a few steadying breaths as watchmen passed beneath him, willed himself not to pass out again, allowed the throbbing and pulsing to subside by staying stock still. Moving worsened it. There was no way he was going to be able to get up the clocktower in this state. If he could barely even walk straight, making the trip would be a death sentence, even if he had installed a method of climbing from the inside, up the shaft of the tower to reach his home to avoid the attention of the Watch. 

Instead, he decided to go to the Crippled Burrick and stay there. It was not the first time, and Basso had always made it abundantly clear that he was free to stay there if the need arose, and this seemed to be an appropriate situation, seemed to warrant it. He waited for the wave of nausea to pass, the throbbing to decrease (even if the decrease was only marginal), and then hauled himself up onto the thieves highway, took stock of the situation.

It was bad.

Really bad.

The Baron’s mansion off in the distance appeared to be ablaze, black smoke billowing into the sky, the trees and smaller buildings surrounding it also aflame, crackling, collapsing. The screaming sounded like it might have been coming from there, but Garrett couldn’t be sure of that. Shouted commands echoed across the City, as well as the marching of boots, the skittering of crossbow bolts on stonework and the thump of Graven bodies on the floor.

Garrett clasped the right side of his head in his hand, jammed his thumb into the corner of his eye and ignored the warm dampness forming on the inside of his glove and on his brow. It wasn’t far now. All he had to do was reach the Burrick, get some rest, and everything would be fine. It would be fine. He sank to his knees, then found it impossible to get back to his feet.

He was fine.

He crawled the rest of the way to the Burrick, stuck to the shadows of the chimneys and shrouded himself on the shady side of the roofs. Dropped down into the courtyard outside the Burrick and then crashed to his knees again; it was painful, not nearly as much as the pain in his right eye, but it wouldn’t cause any harm thanks to his leathers. He let his face sink to the floor, where he smelled the stone and the moss growing in between the cracks. It was excruciating to say the least, so he ripped his hood off and pressed his face into the floor, letting the cold seep up into his head. It failed to put a halt to the throbbing, but instead alleviated the stifling warmth and flush covering his face so he stayed there, knees curled up underneath him, backs of hands also held flat to the stonework.

His eyes roamed across the wall opposite and he studied the brickwork through the bright burnt spots in his vision, with no intention of getting up, even if he _were_ able to, and there he stayed, his face flush with the ground for some time, his eyes screwed shut against the glare of the sun.

The sky was that shade of not-quite-afternoon when he heard pattering footsteps on the ground behind him, and a familiar, confused call of his name. He flinched, half-raising a hand in what could be considered a defensive action, but if the person who was calling for him had poor intentions, he would be a dead man. There was no question there.

That was funny. The thought of being taken out while laid on the floor outside the Burrick incapacitated by migraine, unable to defend himself was _funny._ After _everything_ he’d been through, all the guards, the Graven, the departed, the General-

“Garrett?”

Garrett chuckled to himself, still engrossed in the thought of being shot through while still laid on the ground.

“Are you alright?”

_Was he?_

“Shit. Stay still Garrett, I’m gonna… I’m gonna get you inside. Hang on.”

He flinched again at the sensation of another pair of hands on his shoulder but allowed them to guide him onto his side and then helped by steadying himself and pushing against the ground, permitted Basso to hook his arm around his other shoulder and lever him against the broadness of his shoulders, then pushed onwards, hauling him inside, helping him to the bed in the corner of the room and propping him up against the pillows while Garrett resisted the urge not to vomit again and stars exploded blinding in his eyes.

“You look like death, Garrett,” he held the back of his hand to Garrett’s cheek, who raised his own to bat it away, but only just made it off the blankets before it fell back to his thigh in defeat, “You’re burning up.”

The words cut like arrows into his head and he gripped the sheets tightly, pursed his lips, held up a finger in a clear indication of _be quiet._ Basso shrugged, went to close the door softly, and brought him a cup of water, which Garrett looked at, swirled in his hands, and then pressed it to his head, rolling it over his forehead. The sounds of screaming were still _too audible_ from outside, and Basso followed his gaze, glanced at the window, and then shut the curtains.

Garrett sighed in relief and muttered a garbled “Th’nks,” still sitting with his fingers jammed into the corners of closed eyes, placing pressure on the Primal eye. Daring to open the other, he squinted through the darkness at Basso, gave his best approximation of a smile, and ignored the horrified expression of the other man, who was looking him up and down. He closed them again, unconcerned with what Basso thought.

Mere minutes later, there was a scrape at his bedside where Basso left a bucket, and warm, soft fingers worked their way from Garrett’s wrist and into his hand, where he placed a cold, damp washcloth, and Garrett nodded in thanks, put the cup of water on the table by his head, and then shuffled downwards until he was lying flat on his back, the cloth covering his eyes and forehead.

“Do you mind if I take a look at that hand?” Basso asked, voice as low as he could possibly muster while still easily comprehensible, and Garrett nodded, unwilling to put up a fight, let it fall limp to his side and listened as Basso pulled up a chair, moved the side table, and gathered some materials. Still, he didn’t move, kept his eyes closed tight behind the washcloth, hoped the thumping in the right side of his head would recede soon.

The hand was something that had fallen by the wayside over the previous week. He had been busy, working so hard to find out how to get Erin back. He had not, at any point, had the luxury of finding the time to re-wrap the bandage or clean the injury, and the hole had been sat there, festering for over a week in the muggy hotness of summertime City. He had been lucky that the General’s bolt hadn’t outright shattered his metacarpals and done serious damage to the muscle, it was a miracle that he still had full use of it, and it didn’t feel like it had become infected, so he had taken it and run with it. He didn’t want to know what it looked like underneath the dirty bandage, so he had ignored it. Repeatedly. Pretended it didn’t exist. Basso, he was very aware, wasn’t going to let him get away with it now.

Garrett tried to hide another start as Basso picked up his hand and guided it onto the knee-high table by the bedside, avoiding the damp bloodstain that had seeped through to the top of the bandage and turned it over in his own hands, studying the palm before laying it back down on the table and fetching a basin of warm water, another washcloth, and a bottle of liquid that, once uncorked, emitted a sweet smell that had Garrett forcibly suppressing the urge to curl up and turn away. 

“C’mon Garrett, I know you can handle this,” Basso said, picking up Garrett’s hand again and beginning to unwrap the bandage, “You’ve had much worse before.”

There was a moment of silence while Basso carefully pried the old dressing away from his hand, and when the slow release of pressure reached the actual injury, there was a moment of tension in the bandage, a tearing sensation as dried blood pulled at raw flesh, and Basso took a moment to sprinkle a small amount of water over it, loosening it up again. When he had finished and Garrett’s hand was fully exposed to the air, Basso leaned backwards momentarily in his chair, then sighed. “Well, it could be a lot worse. I have to take your glove off, hold tight.”

Garrett gripped the sheets with his other hand as Basso unclipped the buckles and then worked at the laces, slowly loosening them, searched up and down for an opening following their tautness around his arm. The squeeze of the bracer-gloves around him slowly lifted, and Basso worked the end of the glove over his fingers, trying his best not to catch the wound that was still oozing on either side, and then failing. Garrett tensed for a moment and then helped Basso by pulling his arm out of the glove, which was then swiftly discarded at the foot of the bed, leaving the leather shirt beneath which ended just below his wrist. He was pale - nearly white - peppered with pink and blue tinges at the knuckles and on the underside of his wrist, hand so slim it looked almost hollow with bones outlined by taut skin, the skin around the injury still raw and red. Basso had never seen Garrett any further undressed than when he had his mask down. He wasn’t sure what else he’d expected.

Cleaning. Basso picked up the washcloth and dipped it in the bowl of water and then wrung it out back into the bowl until it was just damp enough to use, then turned to Garrett. “This might sting,” he said, and then began to work at his skin, scrubbing gently to dislodge all the week-old flakes of blood and soaking up what little oozed out, re-soaking the washcloth, repeating. Garrett remained motionless, and Basso wondered if he’d finally fallen asleep.

A sudden jerk informed Basso that he was not, after mistakenly catching the edge of the wound. Basso stopped for a moment, observing Garrett. There seemed to be no more indication that Garrett was any pain, so he cleaned the final smears of blood off both the palm, the back of his hand, and the streaks of pink water that had run down his arm and contrasted with his pale skin then reviewed the injury. From what he could tell, it wasn’t too serious - it would leave a scar, but there were no obvious signs of infection, no swelling, no heat, no pus. When he told Garrett to contract his fingers, he did so with ease, so no sign of severe bone or muscle damage either.

“Why do you have to do this now, Basso?” Garrett asked, head turned away from the direction of the windows, “It’s been fine for the past week.”

“Stop whining,” Basso said in return without venom, “I can’t let you keep running around with a hole in your hand because you _obviously_ don’t want to handle it. Crossbow bolt, right?”

Garrett nodded.

“Please, please don’t tell me you pulled the fucker right back out.”

No response. Garrett knew he shouldn’t have, but he’d done it reflexively. Spent the rest of the week paying for it.

“Garrett, you need someone looking after you or one day you’re gonna end up fuckin’ killing yourself,” Basso said, studying the wound, “Promise me you won’t do this again… or even better, don’t have another run-in with the General. Dunno what he’s up to now, things outside are shit enough as they are.”

Garrett didn’t move, not sure now whether he was grateful for the migraine as a distraction from the General’s fate or not. He allowed himself another groan, a plea with Basso to keep quiet, which he picked up on.

“This is going to sting,” Basso said, and applied the strong, sweet smelling liquid to the washcloth and dabbed around the wound with it, covering both sides; palm and back of hand. Garrett _hissed_ through his teeth in response, fighting the urge to vomit, to snatch his hand back off Basso and curl in on himself, the migraine worsening significantly at the smell, but made do with screwing his eyes shut again and allowing Basso to finish with his wound, let him re-bandage it. 

Although it had been painful to allow Basso to clean him up and worsen his migraine, he felt better for it, cleaner, fresher. He was still warm and sweaty and damp, but the new bandage had done a lot for him, reversing the general _dirty_ feeling he had been suffering for the previous few days. Basso deposited the hand back on the bed by his side, and Garrett rolled over fully this time, came to rest on his side where he curled in on himself, adjusting the damp washcloth to cover his eyes again, and tried to relax. 

Basso stood up and left as quietly as he could, stashing away the medical materials and cleaning his hands, then moved to the door. “I’m going to go upstairs, Garrett, so you can get some rest. I’ll be down to check on you in a bit. Please try to drink somethin’.”

There was a cool draft as Basso shut the door behind him, leaving Garrett alone in the dim light of the cellar. The thumping behind his right eye matched the throbbing in his hand, although the burnt patches had finally faded out of his vision, leaving him with a view of the wall that looked a bit clearer than it had done before.

He laid there for a while, frantically trying to will the away the pain that spiked viciously with the sound of every new scream from Stonemarket. There was no doubt he was wanted by the Watch now, and if they did find him then it would be straight to the gallows, and Basso too for sheltering him. With any luck though, the Watch would be directionless now without a General, would be too entangled in fighting with the Graven, which would hopefully give him the necessary time to recover and get back up the clocktower without putting himself at serious risk of falling and dying. He briefly thought about what had happened to Baron Northcrest after he’d been thrown to the pack of Graven in the lower manor.

It took him a long time, but eventually he felt himself slipping off to sleep, watched his bandaged hand twitch on the sheets in front of him, thankful for the respite. He drifted for what felt like several hours, riding out his hot sweats and cold flashes, clawing back what remnants of dreams he could muster, kicked the sheets below him into a little bundle at the bottom of the bed.

At some point, he wasn’t quite sure when, Basso opened the door and a cool breeze wafted in, washing over Garrett, the sensation pleasant against his warm skin. There was a moment while Garrett felt Basso studying him from a distance, and then, with voice still low, said “Garrett? You alright?”

Garrett offered up an affirmative _“Hmm”_ in return, and felt Basso leave, shutting the door behind him with a _click_.

He floated again.

By the time the air had cooled and the sky had darkened outside, signalling evening’s arrival, he felt significantly better although he was still drained, physically and emotionally. Importantly, the screaming in the distance seemed to have stopped, meaning that the Watch had probably done all the damage that they wanted to do for the time being, and the City had fallen quiet. Basso returned some time later with another cup of water and a plate of something that only vaguely looked like stew, but smelled better and deposited it on the table next to Garrett, _tsk_ -ing at the untouched cup of water on the table. Garrett propped himself up against the pillows, left the washcloth which had dried on the sheets, and looked over at Basso, face devoid of emotion.

“You feeling better?” Basso asked, drawing up a chair again and sitting by his bedside. There was a hint of concern and apprehension in his eyes and his voice, although Garrett didn’t feel up to ribbing him over it.

He nodded. “It was just a headache, I’m fine.”

Basso blew through his lips in something that might have been disgust and withdrew, pulling his hands back into his lap. _“Just_ a headache, he says, _just a headache._ I’ve yet to meet _just a headache_ that leaves a man looking as shit as you did, Garrett. You were _burning._ You looked like you were about to _barf._ But fine. I’m not gonna question you over it if you don’t want. Gods know, if I can deal with you going missing for a _whole fuckin’ year_ then I can deal with anything from you.”

Garrett looked down into his lap, shocked by Basso’s tone of voice. He sounded _angry_ , just like he had done the evening a week ago, when he had learnt for how long he had been away.

 _Away._ Like that was a mystery that had been fucking solved.

“Garrett, I’m not going to nag you over this,” Basso continued after a long pause, the tension in the air significantly thicker, “But you _have_ to start treating yourself better. I’m _worried_. And with the Baron dead, you have to be--”

Garrett’s eyes snapped open and he bolted forward, “Northcrest’s dead?”

“Yep,” Basso nodded, “The Watch found him strung up in his own gardens, completely gutted and surrounded by Graven. They had to fight their way in but a load of them were inside the house and someone set it on fire-” Basso cut himself off, narrowing his eyes, “This didn’t have anything to do with _you_ did it, Garrett? Because I swear to the Trickster’s fresh balls-”

“It didn’t. I think it didn’t, anyway,” he searched his mind for a way of approaching the topic, “I found myself in his study when I was looking for information. He was telling me about Erin, about what he _did_ to her and then he sent me down to face the Graven. I got past them but they must have broken in and torn him apart.”

Basso stared at Garrett, eyes wide, “I'm not even going to ask how you got up there. Alright, so… you got out. What then? Did you find her?”

That had been a mistake of a question on Basso’s part, and Garrett was entirely unsure of how to answer. He stared into space for a moment, formulating his answer while Basso hovered at the corner of his vision anxiously. “I did, she’s alive. I think she is, anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Garrett continued in irritation, “I don’t know what was going on with that… Primal thing. But I _think_ I managed to draw it out of her and the ship cracked in half and-”

“Wait, wait, hold up,” Basso said, holding up a hand, “There was a ship?”

“Orion built a ship, underneath the chapel. I don’t know what he was planning on using it for, but he brought Erin there,” Garrett decided to leave out the bit about the departed, feeling it would take him too much time and energy to explain to Basso that Erin had been turning people into _paranormal monsters_ , “But when I took the Primal out of her, the ship split and I tried to pull her back over the edge, Basso. She slipped, and I tried to save her but I passed out. I haven’t been able to find her.”

Basso just looked at Garrett in shocked silence.

“I _think_ she’s alive,” Garrett reiterated, “But I don’t have any evidence for that.”

There was a very long silence as Basso continued to stare and Garrett listened to the breeze wafting past the Burrick and in through the windows. He collected his thoughts enough to string a sentence together, but only _just_ , and even then the tone was careful and measured. “Garrett, I’m not sure what you have planned next, but I think you should consider _very carefully_ whether you should pursue this or not.” His eyes flickered down to the fresh bandage wrapped around Garrett’s hand, “Were you planning on it?”

Garrett shrugged.

“Think about this: if she’s alive and didn’t stick around to say hi, then she probably doesn’t want to be seen, and there’s nothing you can do about it. If she’s dead, then she’s dead, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Knowing her, she’ll do whatever she damn well pleases in this world and fuck what anyone else thinks, right? But you? You stand to lose a lot. I don’t want to have to be the one scraping your remains off the floor or watching you hang in the plaza. If you want, I’ll ask my other thieves to look out for information on her, but don’t endanger yourself over it.”

It made sense, Garrett supposed, that whatever he had been intending on doing was always going to be fruitless and was unlikely to yield results - he had no leads whatsoever, no clues, no hints. But despite this very logical conclusion, there was still some small thought at the back of his mind that insisted that he _needed to find out what happened to her_ , although it had been quietened when Basso laid it out in front of him. There was something about hearing it spelled out that drew him closer to reality, and away from the weird supernatural hell he had been enduring over the past week. Most importantly, he was reluctant to jump straight back into it, although that might have just been the lingering effects of the migraine.

“What do you think, Garrett?” There was _concern_ in Basso’s voice.

“You’re right,” he agreed, defeated, having been pressed for an answer, “I agree.”

“Well, clearly that’s the best I’m gonna get out of you,” Basso said, laying a hand on his arm sympathetically and giving it a squeeze, “I don’t know what the General’s been doing with his men today, but they’re totally out of control. If you are going back tonight then please be careful.”

Garrett looked down into his lap again. He was still so unsure of whether he wanted to allow himself to think about that, let alone if he was going to tell Basso. The sensation of sticky hotness of blood on his skin and the _crunch_ of the claw as it dug itself into Thadeus’s throat was still painfully fresh on his skin and in his bones. In his experience, it had always been _so much easier_ to just repress uncomfortable things outright than face them, especially if they involved death. Basso would disapprove if he knew that.

“Garrett?”

He didn’t look up.

Basso’s voice became more serious when he failed to respond, “Garrett, did something happen with the bastard?”

“No,” Garrett said. Lied. His response was much too fast and much too quiet, and he suddenly looked up and stared Basso in the eyes, “Nothing happened. I don’t know what’s going on with the Watch.”

Basso narrowed his eyes and tilted his head. Lying was not an activity that Garrett partook in with any semblance of frequency (to Basso, at least, everyone else was fair game), and both the fact that he had looked so uncomfortable when the General’s name had been mentioned as well as the very blatant lie didn’t bode well. “Are you sure?”

“Yes,” Garrett said sharply, and then moved to get out of bed, kicked what remained of the sheets out of the way and then turned around to hastily remake it, even though it was still damp with his own sweat, “I’m sure. I’m going to head back to the clocktower. Clear my head.”

“Are you sure you don’t want anything to eat before you go?”

The bowl of stew sat on the bedside table. It had long since stopped steaming and begun to congeal, bits of dull grey vegetable and mystery meat floating sadly at the surface, accompanied with solidified beef fat, catching the candle light. “No, I’m fine.”

Garrett wasn’t fine. He was starving and dehydrated, had not had anything to drink in nearly twenty-four hours, worked so hard to get Erin back that he was drained of any and all energy he had remaining following the week of chasing her around like a fucking wild goose. He would eat when he got home, if he could stomach it. Basso watched him as he picked his glove back off the floor, attempted to put it back on and failed, made do with stashing it in one of his pouches and made for the door, checking the windows for the light level. It wasn’t quite night time, but it was getting dark; just enough to shroud him as he got home. The air was cool and perfumed with the scent of flowers floating over from Auldale. Easy to cultivate flowers in a part of the City that wasn’t covered in broken cobbles and horse shit. Arguably the best things that grew in Stonemarket were moss and crustose lichens.

“You’re really going to do this?” Basso asked, just as Garrett opened the door. 

He turned around and looked at the fence. “What do you want me to say?” Garrett said, and then disappeared into the night, swinging the door closed behind him, leaving Basso alone in his room, standing sadly by the bed.

* * *

Garrett had never expected to return from the Moira asylum when he had initially visited. He had only ever been there on half a hint, given to him by Erin’s ghostly apparition while he was passed out or hallucinating (he wasn’t sure which) in the great safe, which was also housed in the keep. He had said his goodbyes to Basso while still clutching the side of the boat, entered, and not concerned himself with the fact that the door appeared to have locked itself behind him. If he was dying of the gloom, which at the time had seemed an entirely plausible possibility, then what was the problem either way?

The entire experience had been intensely uncomfortable, not only because of the asylum’s history, but also because he had been repeatedly experiencing flashbacks and painful memories, most of which he was fairly sure weren’t his. The smell, however, had been uncomfortably familiar, although he couldn’t quite place his finger on why, and he instinctively seemed to know his way around some of the areas, particularly the men’s ward. Once again, the reason for this was unknown to him, and he had brushed it off, preferring to focus on the task at hand.

Either way, he had _somehow_ managed to leave unscathed, and not only that, but he had also found a very interesting artefact right at the bottom of the asylum, which looked to him like a mechanical eye - a beautiful, intricate, complex piece of machinery which he had been drawn to after hearing its whirring, and he had held it in a pouch close to his heart on his return. He hadn’t informed Basso of it, nor the Queen of Beggars, nor given any indication that he had chanced upon such a wonder, and instead had hidden it deep in his loot chest, wrapped it up in protective cloth and placed it next to the jar of boiled sweets that Corvo had given to him as a gift three and a half years ago (which itself had remained unopened, sealed, something that Garrett removed from the chest to look at and turn over in his hands and marvel at the colours and then return to the darkness of the chest).

It was several weeks since he last talked to Basso. The migraines had been coming and going, none as severe as the one he had been plagued by on the day that he had lost Erin, but they had been unpleasant all the same, forced him to remain in bed and ball himself up and seek cool darkness. Sometimes they were banished easily with sleep, and sometimes they lingered, plaguing him for days. He found that sleeping at regular intervals (despite the fresh nightmares that had cropped up anew), eating enough and drinking plenty of water made them slightly easier to manage, although nothing seemed to do anything about the fact that he was having them in the first place.

Eating - that had been a problem. It was _days_ before he’d been able to stomach a full meal, finding himself nauseous and dizzy when he considered making himself food. After the conversation with Basso, he’d simply laid in bed for days, staring at the ceiling, willing himself to get up and do anything but finding himself unable to. It was only the prospect of permanent damage caused to his body that eventually forced him to get up, and even then he was slow. Sluggish. Frequently found his mind wandering elsewhere and lost all interest in the tasks at hand, and then dropped them if motivation was too low, to return to bed.

The nightmares themselves didn’t even approach his migraines in terms of severity or impact on his quality of life, but they were unpleasant nonetheless. Garrett had been valiantly avoiding thinking about Thadeus and Erin to the point of partaking in risky activities to fend off the intrusive thoughts - namely leaving the clocktower during the day - although he never did any actual thievery. Simply wandering around on the rooftops and observing the Cityzens as they went about with their daily activities seemed to be enough to achieve his goals, but he had awakened ready to fight far too many times for comfort, and roused with a raw throat and tear tracks tight on his cheeks even more frequently. Basso, he knew, would have disapproved, but he wasn’t here, and they hadn’t spoken in a while, so it concerned Garrett none.

The eye now sat on his workbench, staring blankly up into the rafters, up at all the crows and magpies that roosted there, nestled in a vice which he had padded with material to ensure the eye’s safety. Garrett had decided to study it in the moments that he wasn’t plagued by migraine or disinterest, and slowly began to take notes on the thing, _very carefully_ deconstructing it, studying every gear and lens and spring, noting their dimensions and reconstructing them on paper with a spare stick of graphite, and then rebuilding the eye back to full form, only to take it apart again when the idea took his fancy. He had never seen anything like it before - technology like this was almost completely unheard of except for across the ocean in the Empire’s domain, and even then only for the richest echelons of society. To obtain a piece of this calibre, and not only that, to have the opportunity to study it and take it apart and understand how it worked, was more than he ever could have asked for.

It took him even longer to build up a new set of blueprints for the eye - took him into the deepest, darkest throes of winter and then back out the other side when he started taking on jobs again, when he first became sure that he could predict when his migraines were about to strike. To be incapacitated while on the job was a death sentence, and learning to predict the comings and goings of them became paramount to his longevity. Observing his own habits, his emotional patterns, and his surroundings yielded no answers, and only when he looked further afield did he begin to recognise a pattern.

Sometimes there were days when the Watch were being unusually cruel. The Graven had somehow managed to maintain footing in small pockets of the City over the autumn and the winter, and the Watch forces had taken to tearing down some of their hideouts, which often devolved into full-blown skirmishes lasting for days. It was in those times - days sometimes evolving into weeks - that the powers that were implemented martial law, curfew, and executions; and it was during those periods that Garrett’s migraines reached nauseating severity, when he would be confined to his bed for days on end, praying to every god he could think of for the problems in the City to end.

When he did finally meet Basso again, some weeks after their initial conversation, he pretended that none of this had been happening, but Basso had given him a _look_ that warned him not to lie to him again. Emission didn’t _technically_ count as a falsehood in Garrett’s books, so he opted not to say anything, asking for more jobs instead, which he completed with characteristic promptness and professionalism. All the while, he thought about Erin, asked Basso if his thieves had come upon any new information, but each and every time, Basso shook his head ‘no’ and told Garrett he’d contact him if intelligence did crop up.

Basso always had something interesting to say about the state of the City, however. Deep into the middle of winter, only months after Garrett had woken up in the cart entering Stonemarket, around the time of the Winter Feast Festival, he dropped in to meet Basso, who closed shut the door behind him and sat him down. He didn’t look happy.

“Trouble’s brewin’ in Auldale,” he began, holding a finger out for his new bird, a wagtail called Robin to hop on to, “Dunno what info you’re pickin’ up around the City but it sounds like some kinda power struggle.”

Garrett watched Basso with narrowed eyes. Before the whole thing with Erin, he had been reluctant to get involved in politics at best. Now, it was a downright refusal; if mere politics could fuck his entire life up so badly, then he simply wasn’t interested. “What’s that mean for us?”

“It means,” Basso continued, absentmindedly sorting through the reams of paperwork on his desk, choosing his words _very carefully_ , “that whoever comes next isn’t going to be nice, or pleasant, or sympathetic, and neither is his new General,” He narrowed his eyes at Garrett, “I just think you should be aware.”

That made a lot of sense to Garrett. He had only ever known Baron Northcrest’s rule, but from what he could tell, from all the knowledge he had collected over the years, barons in the City were seldom good ones, and Watch commanders could be just as brutal. The real question for both Garrett and Basso was how harsh the new General was going to be, and how dedicated he was to cracking down on criminal activity in the City. In addition, thought Garrett, it made sense that a person who was willing to partake in such a violent power struggle was unlikely to be sympathetic to those they considered a threat to their position.

He left that day with a new job to complete by the end of the next week, and a germ of concern sprouting in his mind. Things had been bad before. The gloom was certainly dying out, but there were still people suffering from it, and it seemed only mildly contagious, but other problems had popped up in the meantime. The Graven still held pockets of the City. New factions of thieves and petty criminals, all the way down to organised murderers and assassins had been springing up, making like supremely difficult for Basso by way of competition, but with the General’s death, the black tax appeared to have been lifted. The General’s replacement - his old right-hand man appeared not to have kept up on that front.

The worst thing, Garrett found out some weeks later, was that Basso was right. It was about to get worse. Much worse.

* * *

The objective, according to Basso, was a hair clip - pewter, adorned with slim amber stones fashioned into the shape of a flower with little golden leaves trailing down with the stem. Minimalist, Garrett had been informed, but very beautiful and burnished. The client and his motivations, as always, were unknown to Garrett, so he simply took Basso’s suggestion that the clip was probably somewhere in Cragscleft mine to the east of the Cinderfall area of the City, across the North river.

It was an area that Garrett wasn’t entirely familiar with, and typically in his experience, expecting to complete a job to such an obscure part of the City on the same night that he started work on it was a bad idea - setting himself up for failure - so he left that evening with only the barest expectations that he might find the entrance to the mine and scope the place out a bit, let alone come back with the objective.

From what he had read, Cragscleft had been a stone mining region decades or even centuries ago, long before he’d been born, but the mines had since dried up of all resources and the community had suffered a particularly slow and painful death. The mine had been attached to a small village, from which all the miners had been drawn before the stone ran out. Starved of all income, it had fallen into poverty and wasted into nothing; whichever inhabitants had been in a position to move did so - many moved to Cinderfall and took with them their skills, opting to work in the factories and the Old Foundry, and the older people who had been left in Cragscleft village had eventually passed on, leaving what was effectively a ghost town. Nobody lived there any more which made the job even more baffling. If there were no residents, nobody to cause trouble, then surely there would be no guards either, no thieves, no nothing. So why would this clip be in the mine itself?

Garrett banished the questions from his mind as he worked his way across roofs and balconies, travelling toward the north. He wasn't a detective. It was his job to _steal,_ and steal professionally, not to ask questions, and he had long since learnt that sticking his nose into business where he clearly wasn’t wanted or needed was a poor idea at best. His aim was clear - to get in, retrieve the clip, and get back out again.

Something was off about the atmosphere in the City tonight. He worked his way up past the Old Chapel and beyond, skirting around buildings and avoiding the Watchmen as they completed their patrols, which he had memorised to a T by now. Something was wrong. _Something was wrong._

Posters?

According to Basso, the power struggles in Auldale had ceased some nights ago, which he theorised could mean that a new Baron had fought his way into power, which could have been a good thing in a world where men didn’t rule with iron fists, but to Garrett it just spelled danger. The past few weeks had been a blessing for the both of them - the Black Tax had been completely forgotten about and Garrett had been taking in jobs like nobody’s business, but it was never going to be for long. This quite possibly spelled the end of the month of plenty.

He had always expected life to get harder for him again after the new Baron was announced, but what he didn’t expect was to find posters on walls in public spaces stating that his bounty had been tripled and the Watch were offering a prize of 1000 gold for _any_ information on his whereabouts. 

He rappelled down the side of the building he had been sat on and approached the poster. It bore the same mugshot that had been pasted on the posters that the old Baron Northcrest had manufactured, his face thankfully still obscured by his mask, but the concept stirred deep unease in his stomach.

_

Wanted dead or alive

_

No change there then.

_

Known larcener and murderer

_

_What?!_

Garrett tore the poster off the wall, studying it carefully, looking up and around every few minutes checking for patrols. His heart slammed against his rib cage and nausea bubbled in his gut. How could they have _possibly_ known? As if his own guilt and nightmares hadn’t been enough punishment already. He crumpled the damn thing up and crammed it in one of his pouches. If he had been any wiser he’d had torn the thing up and crushed it into the mud beneath his boot, disfigured it beyond all recognition, but something told him to hang onto it, to bring it to Basso and consult on the off-chance that he didn’t already know. Shit. _Shit._

So the new Baron was out to get him, just as, if not more, aggressively than the old one.

He shouldn’t have let himself get too used to the peace he had been enjoying.

He looked around one last time, and trying to quell the frantic thudding in his chest he scaled back up the side of the building and took a moment to calm himself, considered returning to the clocktower. Although the skirmishes between the Graven and the Watch had slowly been dying down, his migraines still popped up from time to time, and they were increasingly affected by stress and anxiety and lack of sleep, and if he had been so shaken upon discovering both his increased bounty and that the Watch _knew_ had had killed Thadeus Harlan, then the chances of migraine were slightly too high to be comfortable.

Regardless, he continued anyway. Dwelling on it would only cause trouble.

As expected, it took him some time to find Cragscleft Mine, and it took him even longer to find the entrance. He had expected the opening to be a lift or several flights of stairs leading into the very topmost levels, but instead he came across a dip in the ground, cloaking a hole in the side of the hill with the remnants of what looked like rails and minecarts stood outside. Upon closer inspection, he found them rusted and filled with holes, the paint stripped away, the edges of the metal sharp and orange and deadly. 

The entrance, Garrett found, sloped downwards and into a cave. A pool of fetid rainwater covered the tracks some way down, and if he could take a shot at anything, he would predict that the place would be flooded in the rainy season, maybe even impossible to reach if the water rose too high and then froze over. The gravel crunched beneath his boots as he stood awkwardly on the platform looking over the hole in the side of the hill. He wasn’t keen on holing himself up in a tight, enclosed places like this, but then again, he hadn’t been keen on entering Moira asylum and he’d done that regardless. If he could do Moira, then he could do Cragscleft.

He took one last look at his surroundings, and entered the mine, following the rail tracks through the puddle of water. The air became much colder the instant he stepped over the threshold. It quickly became too dark to see, and as Garrett continued, he felt the water lapping up past his ankles, reached his knees, his thighs. He pulled out an oil lantern and held it between his teeth as he struck a match and lit it, snapped the little glass window shut and held it up against the darkness. He had promised Basso that he would return with this clip.

Mercifully, it looked like this was about as deep as the water was going to get. He opted not to look downwards as he waded onwards, feeling his leathers soak through and chilling him to the bone. _It was still winter._ This had been a terrible idea.

He pushed on regardless, trying not to breathe any of the smell of stale rainwater in, trying to ignore the feeling of the water lapping at his thighs, hoping against all hope that this place wasn’t actually as big as Basso had warned him. He slipped over the gravel still beneath his feet, slowed down in an effort to maintain his precarious balance, feeling that with any slip, he would be plunged into the freezing cold, and then he _would_ have to return, and all of this would have been a huge waste of time. Crunching his way up the slippery ramp at the end of the stretch of water was even worse, and for every two steps he took forward, he slipped one back. He grunted in frustration.

Oddly enough, he found that there were still electrical lights operating when he got into the mine proper. Whoever had left the mine had clearly also neglected to turn the generator off, and he had heard rumours and stories of the people that used to reside nearby and their extraordinarily advanced technology, but a perpetual generator seemed too far-fetched even for that. It could only mean one thing: that someone, or something, had been here recently. 

When he thought about it, that made much more sense. The clip must have been stolen and brought here by whoever was living or working here, but it didn’t bode him well. He blew out the oil lamp and listened to the air.

Nothing.

Nothing but the plops of condensation hitting the ground and echoing in the complex.

He focused on his surroundings briefly, looking for any traps or precious things he might have missed, but found nothing so he continued. In addition, he thought, if anyone was coming, the crunching of the gravel would give it all away, give him enough time to shroud himself in the darkness of the mine. Whoever would be coming for him? Garrett was better. 

Garrett was _always_ better.

He continued.

Before long, he found himself at a platform which looked like a lift. The buttons mounted on the wall at the other side of the platform were illuminated by another electric light which flickered erratically on and off in the darkness, making his head hurt. He turned his face away for a moment, stepped onto the platform, and reached out to press the button.

Something had moved in the mine shaft beneath him. Something white and milky and slimy.

He froze. Looked down carefully. Focused and then unfocused.

Departed.

It was weak. Dying. It screamed at the hint of noise above it, leaving Garrett doubled over clutching at his head, but then rolled onto its side, clutching its stomach, its blue eyes glowing and casting about here and there for any indication as to where the noise had come from. Surrounding it were more bodies. None of them moved. Garrett focused some more, but none of them emitted the bright blue glow that the living one did. They had all died. All of them.

Disgusted, Garrett took a step back from the edge of the platform and collected his thoughts. It made sense that most of the departed would have died - there was only so much sustenance to be found in these obscure parts of the City, and it was only so long before they would have cannibalised each other and then what would be left? Dust and ethereal poppies and darkness. It was nothing but physics - the bodies needed to consume energy in _some form_ to keep moving, to stay alive - and a small part of Garrett thanked every god out there for the implications. Surely this meant that the ones in Moira were also dying out, that the ones aboard the Dawn’s Light were gone. He turned. No time to think about that now.

It took him a long time to work his way up a floor, through tunnels and gravelly spots, finding occasional departed scattered dead on the floor. None of them, he noted, had rotted away to any significant degree, so they must have been fresh. Another bad sign. He stepped around them carefully and continued onwards. 

The mine seemed to expand into infinity. He walked and walked, looking in corners and little nooks and crannies for the clip, focusing and unfocusing, looking for clues: pages of a diary, footprints, traps, _anything_ that might have given away where his objective was. He dutifully avoided areas where bodies of the departed were present, but finding it unavoidable, skipped lightly over them when it was a necessity, never once turning his back to them, always on edge. It brought back bad memories. He didn’t want to think of those hours he had spent in Moira Asylum, yet he found himself transported back there anyway against his will, and aggressively re-directing his thoughts didn’t really seem to do much good.

He had heard, of course, that the mine had historically also housed some kind of complex on the upper levels, although both he and Basso had dismissed this as nonsense, but when Garrett first stumbled upon a room - a room which was dilapidated and old, with cracked, mossy stonework, but a room all the same - which looked like it had actually been built by human hands rather than carved out of the rock, he was taken aback. The prospect made him uneasy. The electric lights had not been installed here, but sconces had been affixed to the wall, and upon further inspection, Garrett found that they had been mounted with fuel. On the off-chance that someone was still kicking around in this place, he opted not to light it and stuck with repeatedly focusing and unfocusing where his mental map of the room ran out, and kept quiet, listening. Listening.

He continued upwards. The floor above seemed to be comprised of more sandstone corridors with little rooms that led off, almost all of which were empty, except one. He slid in through the door and shut it behind him with a _scrape_ and a sigh. Looking through some of the wooden crates, he found piles and piles of fabric which had been stitched together carefully - all red and cream and black, and deep in one of them he found Basso’s clip. He held it up against the light, where it shone and twinkled. Perfect.

But something had changed when he had ascended the last flight of stairs.

The air was warmer. The place didn’t smell musty and rotten and dead like the lower floors. There were no departed littering the floors.

And there were footsteps. Voices. Coming from the walls or somewhere beyond, he wasn’t sure. Sounded like chanting. Bad sign. Needed to know anyway.

He crept back out, driven more by curiosity now than anything else. He had learnt, _he had learnt already, time and time again_ that sticking his nose into where he wasn’t wanted or needed was a bad idea. He had _learnt_ that investigating new, unexplained phenomena couldn’t _possibly_ turn out well - the Great Safe, Moira Asylum - both had yielded poor results but _fuck if he didn’t need to know what was going on with this place._ He stuck to the shadows. Ascended again.

It was hot here. Hot with the rising steam, the shifting of burning coal and the bubbling of molten metal, ferrous slag set aside for removal and disposal. Piles upon piles of cooled tools. 

An awful lot of men in robes - robes were always a bad sign - surrounded the forges with their hands raised to the ceiling, chanted away between themselves, looked like they were praising, worshipping, praying, but to whom he couldn’t be sure. Well… no. He had an idea of who it might have been, but he hadn’t heard the name said specifically, so he held onto what doubts had cropped up in his mind and observed, unsure of what to do next.

One of them turned.

_Nope._

The heat was so blinding hot that he had pulled down his mask and hood, they had been so saturated with sweat and his hair was plastered to his forehead, and an unpleasant visual aura had once again begun to prickle in his vision, blocking off some areas of view to him, yet regardless he pulled it all back up again, casted for the shadows, turned tail and still crouched to the ground, hurried off.

When he was sure he was completely out of sight, when he could no longer hear the breathy wheeze of the bellows, or the ritualistic chanting, or the _scrape_ of the coal as it was shovelled into the furnace, he _bolted._

* * *

It was the following day when Garrett finally returned to the Crippled Burrick to bring Basso the clip. The migraine that had resulted from what had happened in Cragscleft had left Garrett completely incapacitated for the rest of the evening and the following day, so he had retreated to his bed and ridden it out best he could, hidden himself deep in his sheets and blocked his ears off to what lively activity was going on in the plaza below. 

By the evening, he had still not slept. And Basso could tell. Garrett knew because he gave him _that look_ when he climbed through the windows of Basso’s cellar. A look of disapproval that only resulted in Garrett’s neglect of himself, regardless of how wilful it had been. Garrett briefly considered firing sharp words at Basso in response to the look, but thought better of it, still weakened and drained from the illness.

“Here’s your clip,” Garrett said, dropping the piece of jewellery into Basso’s outstretched hand, “Hope the client appreciates it. Seems like it was more trouble than it was worth.”

Basso snorted and turned it over in his hands, admiring the glint of the pewter and amber in the low light of the oil lamps, a small smile settled on his face, before he looked up again and saw Garrett’s expression. “Yeah, yeah… If you _must_ know, it was completely worth it.” He crossed the room, fished a bag of gold out from the wall safe behind his painting and began to measure out Garrett’s payment on a small pair of weighing scales on his desk. Robin hopped from one of Basso’s hands to the other as he worked, before flying to his hat and staring at Garrett from her perch. She was cute; _that_ was something that Garrett could admit freely, as much as he missed Jenivere. As much as it felt like her death had torn a magpie-shaped hole in his heart.

“But-” Basso continued, holding out the bag of coin, “I hope you’re looking after yourself Garrett. And I hope you watch out because there’s a new Baroness and things are bad.”

Garrett did a double take, “Baroness?”

“Yeah, I was as surprised as you are, there hasn’t been a Baroness in… how many years? Way, way before the Northcrests. Centuries. Anyway, her name’s _Felicity Bloumont,_ and her elected Watch Commander is Chiron Cirrin. Terrifying bastards. Heard three of the people running against her died ‘mysteriously’, but who’s going to prosecute, eh?” Basso looked at Garrett and gestured, “Nobody, that’s who.”

Garrett pursed his lips. Bloumont wasn’t an entirely unfamiliar name. He recognised it from the ritual in the Northcrest estate eighteen months ago. It was irrelevant.

Remembering the poster he pulled off the wall in Cinderfall the night before and laid it on Basso’s desk, unscrunching it until it resembled something that wasn’t just a big mess, “Guess they finally got back to searching for me.”

Basso hunched over the table and spread it out with his own hands, reading the text before he looked back up at Garrett, _“One thousand gold?_ For information on _you?_ ”

“And what’s even better is that someone in Cragscleft saw me.”

Basso’s eyes widened and he stood back, crossed his arms over his chest and rubbed at the stubble on his chin while Robin hopped to his shoulder, “This… This is _bad_ , Garrett. This is _really bad.”_

“Is it?” Garrett hissed through his teeth, scrunching the poster back up and stuffing it in his pouch to burn when he got back, “I didn’t realise. Triple the bounty and over a grand for information on where I am. As if _I’m_ public enemy number one, as if _I’m_ somehow worse than all the rapists and murderers in this gods-forsaken place.” He blew through his teeth and drew a hand down the front of his face, pressing his fingers into his closed eyes, “This is going to make my life so much harder.”

“No, Garrett, you don’t understand… well-” Basso cut himself off at Garrett’s glare, “You do, but there’s more than that to this. What did you see in Cragscleft? Nobody ever should have been there, unless it was empty and maybe a thief or someone tossed it in because they were being followed?”

Garrett paused for a moment and held out his finger for Robin. She flew to her perch and preened herself while Garrett watched, and then looked up at Basso. “Forges. People in red robes. Chanting. I thought it was empty, but it wasn’t. They were forging tools, but I’m not sure why. One of them spotted me, so I didn’t stick around to say hi.”

“I--” Basso stumbled over his words, “Garrett, did you know that Cragscleft-”

“Used to be a stronghold of the Hammerites, yes, but I thought those were just stories.”

“It’s been outlawed by the Northcrests for centuries…” Basso said as he began to pace back and forth, “This… This isn’t possible. How would they possibly have found followers? Why now?”

There was a moment of quiet while Garrett watched Basso as he muttered to himself under his breath and fiddled distractedly.

“I mean… I guess it makes sense that it happened _now_ ,” he continued, “I mean, there’s been no Baron, no leadership, no nothin’ for so long now. Woulda been easy for them to get a foothold, just like us but…” He trailed off, “Garrett, by the gods, I hope none of ‘em saw you taking that clip.”

Garrett shook his head, “I was alone at the time.”

He breathed out, a protracted sigh, “Garrett, the Watch are going door-to-door asking for information on all different known criminals in the City. I think you should lay low for a while, until the hype dies down at least, until you can be sure you can talk to someone or go off on a job without being executed on sight.”

_This was a complication._

“Basso, I--”

“Garrett,” Basso said, his eyes wide, his tone deadly serious, “I’m not going to be givin’ you jobs until I’m absolutely sure you’ll be safe. I’m _not_ having my best thief, my best-” he cut himself off abruptly, “I’m not having you strung up in that plaza. You frustrate me to fuck sometimes, but I won’t let it happen, I won’t. You have to make sure nobody sees you climbing that clocktower, and you have to makes sure nobody catches you out stealing things. Do you promise me?”

Garrett blew through his teeth and let Robin fly back to Basso’s hat. “They’ve never caught me before, why would they do it this time?”

“I worry.” Basso simply said, “She’s too aggressive. She seems to be targeting you _in particular_. The Graven are still fightin’ with the Watch. And the Hammerites in Cragscleft ain’t just a coincidence. I don’t know what’s going on behind the scenes but this is much more dangerous than that old Northcrest lunatic and his weird _Primal.”_

Garrett was stumped. He wasn’t sure what any of this meant either, but he wasn’t nearly as concerned as Basso appeared to be. On the other hand, Basso seemed to possess some very obscure knowledge about the City that Garrett didn’t despite his travels, and something in the pit of his gut told him to listen to his fence, that judging by the tone of his voice and the fear in his eyes that he probably wasn’t wrong either. He crossed his arms again, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, and stood awkwardly by his desk.

“And what about food? How do I get that?”

Basso grimaced and sat back down, “Honestly Garrett, I’m not sure. I can get one of my blackhands to bring it to you but I don’t suppose you’d be all in with that idea.” 

Garrett shook his head in response. “No. I wouldn’t.”

“So you’re just gonna have to steal it. Unless you have a full vegetable garden set up in that clocktower of yours, you’re shit outta luck. Pick up your shinies in the process too, sure, but don’t fence ‘em to me, because if they see you kickin’ around here, there’s going to be trouble.”

Of course. Of course there would. There was _always trouble._ And all the while, his fingers would be with him, getting _itchy._ With nothing to do.

“Fine,” he said in acquiescence, “I’ll do it. Just don’t have a go at me when you can’t pay your Black Tax because you have no income.”

“I’ll manage,” Basso said, the wobble in his voice poorly disguised, “What matters to me is that you’re safe. I’ll send you a message when I hear the powers are shifting back again, back into place, and then you can start work again. That sound good?”

No. That did not sound good at all. That sounded like shit served up on a fresh hot plate, but what choice did he have, really? Basso seemed like he had made up his mind, and Garrett knew that once his mind had been made up, he wouldn’t be shifted. They were both far too stubborn for their own good. 

“Alright.”

“Good.” Basso said, returning to the seat behind his desk and began to riffle through the pages distractedly, “I will be in touch Garrett, I promise. I’ll let you know if we find any information on where Erin is. But your safety is my absolute priority.”

Garrett scowled, but then made do with a nod. Turned on his feet and took one last look at Basso as he opened the door to the Burrick.

“If you don’t tell me when the coast is clear, I’ll steal all your shit.”

“Yeah, yeah whatever,” he watched Garrett head towards the door, and then decided to voice what had been bothering him since Garrett had pulled out the poster. “Garrett - About that wanted poster?”

Garrett turned and shot him a raised eyebrow.

“Known larcener and murderer? It wasn’t… it wasn’t the General, was it?”

His stomach felt like it had dropped out of his body. He stood awkwardly in the doorway for what must have been seconds but felt like minutes, shifting from foot to foot, unsure of how to respond. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to. Didn’t even want to think about it himself. So instead of responding to Basso’s request, he turned on his heel and disappeared into the night, shutting the door behind him.

It had taken him so long to learn how to force the thought of the General from his mind but basso’s question had ripped it open anew. He pulled his hood down lower over his face, trying to hide from the world, to pretend that he was _actually_ no more than shadow and hopped up the crates in the corner of the courtyard and up onto the nearby roof. He had a nasty feeling that it was going to be a long time before the danger to him and Basso abated, and even longer still before he could come to terms with his own failings.

He returned to the clocktower and flung the crumpled-up poster into the brazier, where flames licked around it and spat red-hot sparks into the air, and then went to his bed and stared up into the rafters for a very long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not content with mangling the reboot lore, Ledaeus now feels compelled to trample all over the original trilogy too.
> 
> As always, next update = next Weds.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six years later, things are as bad as ever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again to Sardine for beta-ing :)

6 Years Later

It hadn’t been long into Baroness Bloumont’s reign before she had commissioned a building in Auldale called the Grand Court and began to conduct business there. It was a magnificent building - covered in intricate stonework, ornate window frames, elegant carved wooden doors - no expense had been spared in its construction and, like most other buildings in the City, it had also taken far longer to build than planned.

The late Elias Northcrest had never seemed particularly keen on leaving his estate, handled most of the running of the City from his private rooms, conducted business one-to-one with contractors and Watch officials quietly, behind closed doors, with no indication that they had ever taken place. Garrett knew because he had found a letter from a Watch officer several years ago, long before any of this had happened, stating that the General had taken a meeting with Northcrest and returned with several bags worth of gold. He (Northcrest) had been a private man. The Baroness wasn’t that much better - still held some meetings off the books and kept no minutes - but preferred to leave her home to run the City and allowed only the richest and most influential in Auldale to approach her in Court. 

Of course, this was only after she had disposed of those who had run against her in the six months after Northcrest’s death. From what Garrett had heard, some had their throats slit in their sleep, others had been shipped off to slave labour mines in the Isles, and more had simply been locked up in the dungeons underneath the Grand Court, never to be released. It had been six years. He had not heard news of prisoners leaving, but he had heard much of those who entered. 

Those particular dungeons appeared to be reserved for her own personal rivals, however. Garrett knew he could never really be sure about anything unless he had seen it with his own eyes, but there were already prisons - plenty of them, in fact - for common criminals like thieves and murderers, and what was more was that they were all full to bursting. The existence of these particular jails was something that he hoped never to have to verify, but it made sense. The rumours and the facts and the incongruence between reports added up and painted a disturbing picture.

Judging by how fervently she had been searching for him in particular, it was there that _he_ would be going if he wasn’t careful, if not to the gallows or the mines. He tightened his methods considerably in the years that passed, as she cycled through new, increasingly aggressive techniques. Prisons were a fate worse than death, in Garrett’s mind, and although he knew he’d have the capacity to get himself out of the City jails through bribery and contacts and blackmail, he wasn’t entirely sure about these new ones. It wasn’t something he was willing to risk.

It had been so long from the incident with Erin and still no word. Basso gave Garrett general news as he came and went. Spare jobs here and there. Nothing of note. Basso had been acting strange, which Garrett wasn’t quite sure how to approach, although he knew he had to at some point. It came to a head many months later in the dead of winter, when Basso had looked uncomfortable and moved quickly to turn over a sheet of paper - briefing sheet - on his desk to hide it from Garrett’s view as soon as he entered.

Garrett thoroughly grilled him for several minutes, and eventually Basso relented in that sad way that he did, when his shoulders sagged and he looked far thinner and paler than he ever should have done.

“I didn’t want to tell you about this, Garrett,” Basso told him, shifting from foot to foot distractedly, “You’re really gonna make me do this?”

Garrett simply folded his arms across his chest and raised an eyebrow. “You can’t just _allude_ to this mysterious job and not tell me about it.”

Basso looked pale and drawn these days. Older. The tripled Black Tax had been slowly catching up with him. The Baroness hadn’t planned on reaching an equilibrium with the, as Basso would call them, _entrepreneurs_ in the City but instead seemed intent on stamping them out, gaining a nice bit of gold, and making a point in the process. His thieves had been leaving one by one, some going to work for the rival fences and organisation that had sprouted up in the dirtiest parts of Stonemarket, and some simply had been captured and executed or imprisoned. There was nothing he could have done for any of this. Garrett had observed him worrying and pacing and wringing his hands over these thieves, but ultimately it had been a waste of time. He was struggling. Garrett knew his business wouldn't make it much longer. Judging by his health and the stress and anxiety the Black Tax had placed on him, Basso might not either.

The prospect of helping Basso pull himself out of the mud. _That_ was only part of what made the job so tantalising; and it had been precisely why Basso had tried to hide it from Garrett. What fascinated Garrett more was that this time, he knew he wouldn’t be stealing a mere trinket or bauble. This was the stuff that he could get his teeth into.

“I’ll take the briefing myself if you don’t tell me, Basso.”

“Fine,” Basso said with a sigh, obviously very uncomfortable at the prospect of giving Garrett any further information, “I really don’t want you going anywhere near the Court but if you must then I’d rather keep an eye on what you’re doing so you don’t simply disappear and never come back. Client’s very rich. Worked with her before on a lot of other projects, but she’s never offered as much money as this in the entire time I’ve known her. Her father’s been in Bloumont’s prison for months now and she’s suddenly lost contact. Says she doesn’t know where else to go, but thought I might know someone who would be able to either break him out or find out what happened to him.”

Garrett tipped his head and leaned backwards onto Basso’s desk, ignoring the dull ache in his knuckles, a lingering product of his torture under the Whalers. “If she’s lost contact then he’s probably dead.”

“Yeah, well. I’m sure she thinks that too. Nice to get a bit of _closure_ sometimes though, isn’t it?” He narrowed his eyes and looked Garrett up and down, “If she’s got the cash for it then I ain’t stopping her commissioning me.”

“And _you_ need to get a grip on your Black Tax situation. Guessing this’ll solve everything?”

“You,” Basso said, crossing his arms and shifting from foot to foot, “Cheeky taffer. Yes. Fine. It’ll solve a lot of my problems _for the time being._ And you’ll get your cut, no worries there--”

Garrett plucked the briefing out of Basso’s hands and studied it closely in the dimmed light of the room for a minute. “I’ll do it for free. Keep the money. More beneficial for me to have my fence keep his head above water than continue to rake in cash I’ll never use. Just let me keep the nicer trinkets if I find any.”

That was unexpected, Garrett knew, and it was reflected in Basso’s widened eyes and opened mouth. Garrett had changed a lot in the previous six years, they both had, but something like this was unprecedented. There was a moment of silence while Basso appeared to process what Garrett had said, before rebuking him. “Having you work for free doesn’t constitute an employment contract. That’s volunteering. I’m not letting you go without pay.”

“So,” Garrett said, drawing out his words, “Stealing other people’s shit for you and paying me off the books _does_ constitute a normal employer-employee relationship then? You should have told me sooner. I might have been able to make good use of that information.”

Basso scoffed. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up, Garrett, I doubt anyone would want to employ you for anything, ever. Just stick to larceny and we’ll all be much better off.”

Garrett blew through his lips for a moment, and then redirected. “What’s the guy’s name? Any other information?”

“Arthur Linton. Don’t know the layout of the place so couldn’t give you a cell number. Prisons are _supposed_ to be on the lower floors but you can never tell these days. Daughter says he’s greying, slim in the face, brown eyes. There should be a picture on the back there,” He paused and watched Garrett turn the briefing over in his hands, “Dunno if he’ll be of sound mind if he _is_ alive so just watch out for that - if he screams, or makes your job too difficult, you run. I don’t expect the Baroness will have been treating him very well.”

He didn’t need to tell Garrett that. Basso had been getting increasingly jumpy recently over his safety, although that might just have been due to the loss of some of his other thieves. Regardless, Garrett found it irritating. He had never appreciated being micromanaged by anyone, not when he was younger and not now either, and especially not by Basso, although he kept his mouth shut. The warnings were coming from a good place, regardless of how much they irritated the living daylights out of him.

“And you’re sure she’s going to pay you, right? Not going to pull a fast one?” 

Garrett had a point. Some of the obscenely high payments Garrett had seen Basso promised in the past had, upon further investigation, turned out to be a scam. These sort of dangers _rarely_ got through Basso’s filters, although there had been two that had them both convinced enough to do the job. And both times, Garrett had robbed the offending parties blind, taken back twice what they owed in valuables and then scattered them far and wide for the highest prices he could barter for. It was always the rich who seemed to think they could get away with it - the poorer segments of the City knew better than to try to give established and respected rings of thieves the runaround.

“I’m sure. She gave me two-thirds up-front. I have no concerns, it’ll be fine.”

“Good.”

There were too many people going missing for Garrett to let this go easily. Basso was the last person that Garrett seemed to be able to go to directly for work: Vittori had gone missing several years ago, simply disappeared from the Siren’s Rest one day (Garrett suspected he had either been arrested or returned to ‘Illyria’) and Ector had packed up shop and moved soon after Vittori, taking all his amazing inventions along with him. Again, where Ector had disappeared off to was a mystery, and a damned shame at that, he’d always had some fascinating contraption to show off to Garrett whenever he dropped by to ask about work.

Basso, Garrett was determined, would not befall the same fate.

“Don’t suppose you have any more information on the Grand Court then?” Garrett said. It wasn’t a necessity, but it would certainly make his life easier.

“Unfortunately, no. I had hoped that Linton’s daughter would have had some details on them but,” He gestured, “Nothing. You’re going to have to wing it. Make sure you go prepared, and-” He cut himself off as Garrett turned to leave, “Garrett, let me know when you plan on going. I’m expecting you to return to me at the end of the night so if anything… If anything _does_ happen, I can sort something out quickly.”

Garrett pulled up his scarf and adjusted his hood. “Tomorrow. I’m planning on doing it tomorrow. I’ll be back by six in the morning, whether I get the info or not.”

“Alright,” Basso said, holding out his fingers and watching Robin hop from ring to ring, “I’ll be waiting.”

* * *

Garrett looked down the shaft of his clocktower and studied the structure intently. 

It had been many years since he built the winch and pulley mechanism for transporting heavy goods up to his living space - bedding, building materials, things that he was capable of carrying here and there on flat ground but not up the side of the clocktower, especially if it was required to be carried in one hand. He had worked hard on it, painstakingly mapping and measuring every inch of space and nook and cranny, and then drawn up a design, fitted it to the dimensions of the clocktower shaft, selected his materials carefully and spent plenty of time finding them. The winch and pulley had, of course, come first, and they had certainly made his life so much easier. It had taken him several iterations of hooking up his materials to the other side of the pulley system before realising that it would be much safer to sort out a method of climbing up the inside too. That way, the risk of being seen by guards was next to zero.

That solution, of course, was a structure that heavily resembled the wooden scaffolding on the outside of the clocktower supplemented with platforms, which he used to ascend safely to the top. It had taken some time for him to get used to it, and one day he _did_ plan on improving the very crude design, but for the time being, it would do. It was no good to fall into comfortable patterns, but he found life getting in the way far too often, so parts that should have been improved on were left hanging. If they were functional, he rationalised, he could put it off for another day.

Now, however, it was broken. He hadn’t even had chance to improve the design yet, he had been so busy. The ropes that had connected the pulleys with the winch and the hook had snapped suddenly during the previous night and torn the pulleys from the beam above, crashed through two of the platforms on their way to the ground and utterly destroyed Garrett’s chance of carrying the pile of books he had managed to stuff under his arms to the top of his clocktower. Instead, he had left them at the bottom and climbed to the top around the outside, like old times.

Now he remembered why he had installed this thing in the first place, even if it had been a complete pain.

He wasn’t sure what had caused it, but if he could guess, it would be the freezing weather. The particularly brutal winter had left the surrounding houses covered in snow for an extended period of time, rendered the cobblestones in the plaza slippery and the roofs lethal. He had slipped, crumpled to his knees and nearly slid off a roof or balcony more than once now, so he had restricted his ventures out to only those which had been strictly necessary.

So, of course, as soon as he’d finished off all the books in his clocktower, he had gone out to steal more without hesitation.

It might have just been that some moisture had weaseled its way into the fibres of the rope and repeatedly frozen and thawed over the winter, reduced its integrity, and eventually snapped, but the effects were the same nonetheless. It was just a shame that it had torn down the rest of the mechanism, and his platforms, with it. He had always had the little thought in the back of his mind telling him to use a chain instead, but it had been difficult to get ahold of at the time, so he had used the rope as a stopgap. And then changing it had fallen too far down his to-do list.

The winch and pulley had originally happened when Basso warned him about the vicious, aggressive nature of the new Baroness and her new Watch Commander, six years ago. Concerned about the new Watch patrols, Garrett had spent several nights first gathering the materials for the scaffolding, spending way more time in the industrial parts of the City than he ever had intended, then planned it, cut the wood to size, and spent a further two weeks constructing it between the crippling migraines. He almost felt like he’d been permanently weakened by them, found himself needing to rest for five minutes every hour or so, and the lack of energy caused by sickness at the time hadn’t exactly helped.

He hadn’t had a migraine in months now, and he was thankful for the fact. The winch and pulley, however, were broken regardless. He would have to do something about that as soon as possible, unless he was going to spend all his effort getting used to climbing around on the scaffolding outside again.

Garrett had to complete the Linton job first, he was running out of food, and it would be nights before he even began to think about getting it repaired, even if everything went as smoothly as he planned. He had never been one for _rigidity:_ in his mind, that was a recipe for disaster, his plans _always_ needed to have some element of _give_ , but even he could admit that it was nice to have a list of tasks and an expected date of completion, even if the effect was purely psychological.

It had also taken him a significant amount of time to factor in days here and there for when he was incapacitated by migraine, but when he did, he found himself less stressed. It wasn’t a kindness he had ever intended on allowing himself; jobs, real life, and the need for food and fuel weren’t going to let up just because he felt unwell on any given day, but once he found himself planning for unexpected events, it almost became easier. He was _happier_. His migraines were less frequent. He was more likely to do a good job. Once he’d worked it out, he was unsure of how he’d ever managed without.

The scouting trip for food that night was uneventful. He returned just before the sun rose with fresh meat and vegetables, which he threw in a pot and set to boil as he washed and changed, returned clean, clothed in a loose linen shirt and a woollen wrap, a pair of thick socks to keep out the cold. Fresher and happier, he collected a bowl of stew and sat contentedly on his window sill with a book, and watched the sun rise over Auldale. Listened to and enjoyed the birdsong as they sang to the watery sunrise. Retired to bed when the brightness of the day became too much and his head too heavy.

He slept through the pale warmth of the day peacefully curled into his blankets.

* * *

It was late. 

Late enough.

Garrett doubted that the guards would ever really leave the Grand Court unattended, but if there was any time that it would be quietest, and he’d be less likely to be seen, it was now. Moonlight lit his way across the roofs sporadically, appearing and then disappearing behind thick cloud, snow fell thick and fast, driving into Garrett as he travelled against the wind. Snow could be considered a good thing in some aspects, but only some. The Watchmen’s torches were clearly illuminated against the snow, so Garrett could see them coming from further away, but did that really make up for the fact that his scarf was already waterlogged and his hands were cold as ice? His knuckles seized. They were made so much worse by the cold, although he always tried to push through it.

He hopped over a gable and slid down the other side of the roof, onto a flatter area, and observed. Only a couple of houses away now. He suspected it would be easier to infiltrate the place from the upper floors - there would be guards patrolling the lower areas, the windows, the front doors, so entering through a window towards the top would avoid suspicion. If he made any more noise than he needed to, it would be carried by the howling wind, impossible to detect from so far below.

Provided, of course, he didn’t slip.

He picked his way across two more buildings, cursing himself for not bringing goggles or some kind of device to strap onto his boots to mitigate the risk of slipping. He was too high up to be getting complacent. He slowed his pace considerably, carefully studying each patch of roof before stepping onto it, testing it with a tentative foot in the critical areas, holding his arms out for balance. He wasn’t sure why he hadn’t just told Basso he’d complete the job when the weather cleared up. Maybe he’d just been bored.

Not only was the Grand Court a magnificent building, it was also perfect for climbing. It was close enough to the adjacent house that, with a well-aimed swing, his grappling hook sailed up and behind a balcony and latched on, leaving him safe to swing to the side of the building and work his way up. The bricks, thankfully, provided his feet with enough friction to scramble up and up until he was free to pull himself up and over, pivoting at the top and landing safely on the balcony. He de-tangled his grappling hook from the stonework, sheathed it back in its pouch on his thigh, and studied his surroundings, rewinding the rope and clipping it back into his harness.

The only way forward were a pair of smallish glass doors with intricate decorative metalwork, unless he wanted to expend more energy ascending further. Opting not to take the risk, he picked at the lock on the doors and swung them open, crept through, and closed them again. If guard patrols were to come up here and find melted snow on the floor, it would potentially trigger an alarm and search. Garrett had no time for that.

The room that he found himself in was grand, huge, beautifully decorated and immaculately kept. The floor was covered in deep red and white tiling, littered with decorative chairs and desks and plants, the ceiling rimmed with a ledge which led in from the windows, where Garrett crouched and observed. The place was barely lit: the chandelier that hung on the domed ceiling had been extinguished for the night; a good sign. He looked around for a way down, and spotting some tall bookcases on the other side of the room, he looped around and hopped down from one to the next, until he was safely on the floor.

Many of the buildings that had been destroyed in the Watch-Graven skirmishes years ago still hadn’t been rebuilt. There were medical posts that had been abandoned, placing severe strain on the community. People were still _dying_ of hunger and disease. And the Baroness had spent so much money building and decorating this place instead of helping them or improving the community.

It seemed common in places like this, and to him it was beneficial. The more new, grandiose buildings that popped up, the better. More rich people to rob, more workers with their valuables, it bothered Garrett none. That small humanitarian sliver in him thought it was a shame that it had to come at the expense of the smallfolk, but the raging thief screamed that it was perfect; his very own personal playground. He picked up a golden pen from a desk, observed it for a second, watched how the light glinted on the body, and then pocketed it.

He moved on.

The doors to the room were locked, and he made short work of the lock with his picks. The same style as the window-doors above but bigger, the lock _clicked_ and the door creaked open, leaving enough of a gap for him to slip through onto a hallway with another grand staircase, which he worked his way down carefully, noting how the lower levels of the house were brightly lit compared to the upper ones. He retreated backwards and into the shadows. Pressed himself against the walls as he slid around and down. Slipped into an alcove behind a stone statue as two guards passed, laughing and chatting and entirely unaware of Garrett’s presence.

Maybe there was information on Linton in the archives, if they had any?

He studied the area intently, listening for any more evidence of guards, and satisfied that he was completely alone, he crouch-walked to a pair of dark oak doors and stared through the keyhole.

Darkness.

He picked the locks with haste and slipped through, swung the door behind him closed, locked it, and looked around. It looked almost like some kind of ballroom. A huge polished table stood in the middle of the room, stretching from one end to the other with feet to spare, and on three sides, the panelled walls were covered with huge bookcases, each labelled with a letter in alphabetical order. If these contained information on the Baroness’s political opponents, then she was either very paranoid, or was very good at simply collecting information. It was either that, or she’d simply collected information on everyone she possibly could. Garrett resisted the urge to look for evidence that he’d been discovered, or any made notes on his existence, and made a beeline for the “H” bookcase.

Moonlight spilled into the room from the windows on the other side of the room, silver splashed across the surfaces of the tables that were sat underneath the windows, and Garrett squinted, straining his eyes, unwilling to either move towards the tables for a better view, or to light a candle. He trailed his finger down across the spines of the books, searching, searching. Maybe this wasn’t where she kept information on her opponents at… ah.

_Linton, A_

Perfect.

Garrett stood by the bookcase and opened the file, searching through the documents inside it. Seemed like he had been one of the more influential men in Auldale. Had close ties to the Thief-Taker General and Northcrest, but not as close as the Baroness’s late husband Bloumont. A document that Garrett had found back when he’d been searching for Erin stated that the General had been instructed to take out those who’d completed the ritual with him in the Northcrest estate… _54 years old, vastly wealthy…_ Garrett moved his lips silently as he read, using his thumbnail to keep track of where he was, _three adult kids, deceased wife._

_Dead._

The file stated that he’d died within the last three days of some kind of kidney failure. Bingo. Pay day for Basso.

Garrett slipped the document out of the file and folded it up carefully, packed it in one of his pockets. He knew he’d have to find some kind of waterproof casing before he went back out into the elements as the ink was likely to smudge, and all of this would have been for nothing.

He turned.

There was a rattle at the door. A scrape as a key was jiggled in and turned. 

Garrett panicked. Searched frantically around the room for a place to hide. Found only the tables underneath the windows, cloaked in starched white covers, and he lunged. Slid across the polished floor at the last moment and made his way underneath the table, adjusting the cover from the inside so that it would stop moving just in time for the guardsmen to flick on the lights. 

Shit.

This wasn’t something he had ever planned on having happen, but it was better than being caught and having to bolt for the exit, hoping that there were no crossbowmen within range. He sighed internally, watched the guardsmen as they worked their way around the room, lighting candles at the edge, stationing themselves at the doors. Garrett was trapped. There was no way he’d be able to make it to a safe place until either they left or the lights were put out again. He observed from a crack in the cloth by one of the table legs, ran his hand up and down the notched wood absentmindedly, dug his thumb into the grain. What could they possibly be doing here at this time of night? Had they actually caught him and trapped him in? Were hundreds of Watchmen about to appear out of nowhere and drag him off to the prisons below?

He held his breath.

Stood as still as possible.

Remained stuck to the floor for so long that his knees began to ache and the muscles in his leg screamed and his neck seized up.

He waited for what felt like hours.

_What on earth could have possibly motivated these two guardsmen to stand guard in an empty room for so long? What could have happened?_

The moment he heard footsteps, he allowed himself to relax into a sitting position, folded up cross-legged underneath the table. His bones ached. Muscles screamed. A headache pounded at the base of his skull where he’d been straining not to move. He resisted the urge to rub and press into his eyes as the footsteps made their way into the room. He stopped. Peeking out from behind the table cloth again, he spotted the folds of a dress and a pair of kitten heels poking out from underneath.

He had not seen her before. Rumour was that she was simply an old hag, but that couldn’t have been further from the truth. She was graceful, dignified, held her head high. A small pair of spectacles sat on the end of her nose, her slim face was framed by salt-and-pepper hair pulled back into a severe bun. Judging by the stiffness of her movements, she was almost elderly, maybe in her late sixties, but when she spoke, her voice was harsh and assertive.

“Where is he? I didn’t stay up working this late to be kept waiting.”

A meeting. She was having a meeting. Garrett cursed himself inwardly. Of all the places he had to stumble into, it was a meeting, and how long would that last? He bunched his back up against the wall, getting himself as comfy as was possible under the circumstances, watched her feet as they circled the table in the middle of the room. A _meeting._ At this time of night?

“I don’t know, ma’am. He said he’d be here by midnight. Would you like to take a seat?”

Garrett hadn’t been quite sure what time it was, but midnight was earlier than he had expected. If he were to guess, he would have estimated it to be two in the morning, at the very least.

“I’m quite alright, commander. You go and do your job, please ensure that nobody disturbs us.” There was a small noise of protest, and then a silence as she undoubtedly gave him a _look_ , “I’ve been doing this job for several years now, I’m quite capable of handling myself. Thank you very much. Off you trot.”

Another silence, then the click of heels as the Watch commander bowed deeply and left Bloumont circling the table again distractedly, looking out the window, removing files from the bookcases opposite and re-reading them. There was an air of _grace_ about her; one that Northcrest had not struck Garrett with in their short meeting. She seemed measured, composed, confident.

She was dangerous.

A madman was likely to make mistakes, to act rashly, to shed hints as to what he was planning next. Someone, especially a woman, who was self-confident enough to effectively tell a senior Watch commander to fuck off had _hammers of steel._ She scared him so much more than Northcrest ever did. Garrett wondered briefly if anyone _had_ come to her with information on his whereabouts.

Several minutes passed. The clock in the middle of the room struck twelve, and eventually she took a seat at the head of the table, legs crossed and arms folded patiently. More minutes. More silence. The two guards at the door shuffled periodically, looking for comfort in their rigid postures yet finding none.

The man who she was supposed to be meeting with turned up ten minutes late. The sounds of a door banging, loud voices and more footsteps alerted Garrett that several more people had entered the room, but who the man was, Garrett couldn’t tell. Bloumont raised a hand, sending the two guards who had accompanied him into the room turning and leaving. The door slammed shut again.

It was just Garrett, the Baroness, the two guards, and the man she was meeting with. He took a seat at the other end of the table and sighed, poured himself a glass of water. Judging by his movements and the shadows on the floor, Garrett would guess the he was robed.

“I hope you realise you’re late,” the Baroness said, pouring herself a glass of water too and taking a sip, leaning back in her seat, “No - I hope you realise it’s late and you shouldn’t be keeping me waiting, especially at such an hour.”

“My apologies ma’am,” said the man, his voice sincere, “The roads have been treacherous tonight. The ice has been terribly bad for the carriage. It will not happen again.”

There was something about this man’s voice that stirred recognition in Garrett, although he couldn’t quite place it. It must have been _years_. He continued to listen.

“I hope not,” said Bloumont, sipping at her water, “You _are_ the one asking me for a favour here. Whatever you have to ask of me, I am well within my rights to reject it, and you would do well to remember it.”

“Of course,” a pause, “But this, given an opportune outcome, will benefit us both greatly. My compatriots will bring you new methods and means of control, new research, new levels of power. It would be a shame to throw away such an opportunity.”

Maybe he was from a different country? His accent was clearly native to the City, but maybe this man had spent time abroad, maybe this was a pact between two powers? If it involved subjugating the Cityzens, it could never spell a happy ending. Garrett had seen subjugation. Everyone was poorer.

“Of course. But everything comes at a price, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. It does. The benefits we will bring you will far outstrip the costs you have to bear, but there are, indeed, costs.”

The Baroness sounded less than impressed when she spoke. “Such as?”

“Well, firstly, let me show you what we have to offer.” 

There was a ruffle of fabric as the man rose to his feet, scraped his chair back, and the guards at each door stood to attention, threatening the man, who froze and held up his hands. The Baroness waved a _stand down_ at the guards, and then they relaxed. Grateful, the man continued, stepped around the table, came to a stop beside the Baroness, and dropped a small box in front of her.

It was only now that Garrett finally managed to get a good look at the man’s face.

He had aged significantly. He had looked old before, but now he was practically _sagging_. Cloaked in red and black and cream, he stooped down beside the Baroness and twisted the box, which emitted a sharp _click_ and he smiled.

He had grown a beard. His moustache was still present but now it was less of an ashen blond and more of a pale silver. His hair had grown long, and although he had been fortunate not to lose it, lucky not to go bald in his old age, it still didn't suit him well. His robes dwarfed him. He looked fragile, thin, likely to simply snap apart and crumple onto the floor. The years had not been kind to him, like he had been kind to Garrett back in the day.

It was Ector.

So he hadn’t moved abroad, hadn’t jumped ship and escaped the Baroness’s tyranny. He had simply moved north, to Cragscleft. He had never given Garrett any sort of indication that he knew about the Hammers that had taken up residence in the mountain. Always full of surprises.

The box itself appeared to be made of glass. It was small, about the size of Garrett’s palm, inside there was a coil of metal, and inside the coil of metal was a shard of glowing blue stone. It couldn’t be…? There was a twinge right at the back of his right eye.

The box glowed blue beneath the Baroness’s hands. She picked it up, turned it this way and that, studied it for some time, then looked up at Ector. “And this is…?”

“It’s just a demonstration ma’am. One potential application. Wireless power. Could I turn the lights out for a minute?”

He waited as the Baroness hesitated and then nodded, motioned at the guards to switch the lights off, and then they were bathed only in candlelight. Garrett considered taking the opportunity to make a run for it, but before he could even untangle himself from his own legs, Ector had tapped the box against his hand, and the lights switched back on, twice as brightly as before, flickering slightly, high frequency against the darkness. He smiled down at the Baroness for a moment, then tapped it again, the lights went back out, and they were plunged into darkness. There were a few seconds before the guards switched the lights back on again, leaving the room in stunned silence.

“So…” the Baroness began slowly, choosing her words carefully, “This box can switch lights on and off without anyone ever having to touch an actual switch?”

“Not just that,” Ector said, “You can apply it to anything. Anything that uses electricity can be activated just by using this box. Of course, we have more advanced mechanical inventions, but…” he trailed off, _“This_... This is the future, ma’am. We can bring you power and control beyond that which you could have possibly ever imagined. Those mechanical soldiers across the Southern Sea, in the Isles of the Empire, the Jindosh ones? They are nothing in comparison to what we could create. They will crumple like dust. You could bring electricity to every building in the City. You could build undefeatable battle automatons. Unlimited wealth and prosperity and industry for all. We have done more with the Primal than the late Elias Northcrest ever could have dreamed of.”

The Baroness’s eyes widened at the prospect, and then narrowed as she clutched her necklace and twirled the jet between her fingers. “And the price?”

Ector faltered, took the box back off her and hurried back to his seat, tucked it away in one of the folds in his robes. “We ask for three things: firstly, we want funding for the village of Cragscleft, which, despite growing to significant size over the past six years, is still struggling. Our people still have to fight for food and healthcare. We rely on each other, and sickness is still rampant. We have repopulated, but we have not the infrastructure to support ourselves like Dayport, Auldale and Stonemarket. Secondly,” he continued, ignoring the disgusted wrinkle of Bloumont’s nose, “We want to be able to police our own communities. The Watchmen, since they have started patrolling Cragscleft village again, have been cruel and vicious. We can monitor our own communities, look after ourselves, and self-police. Our families are beholden to the sacred word of the Master Builder, and He condemns violence and theft. We will look after our own, prevent crime, and in addition, it will save the City funds that are currently spent on sending patrols out to beat and subjugate our own.”

“And the third?” She didn’t sound impressed, but Garrett wouldn’t have completely discounted the idea that she might have actually taken up the deal.

“We wish for you to return us the Chapel of the Old Gods, along with the old places of worship in Dayport. We can rebuild it, make it like new, build community services, but please let us worship our god in peace. We will not bother you, we will provide to you our technology and our research and our progress, but you _must_ allow us to worship.”

Silence.

Then a huff, a sharp expulsion of breath between her lips which turned into a chuckle, and then into a snort. Ector sat at the other end of the table while the Baroness threw her head back and laughed.

“You think I’m going to let you heathens actively worship your false gods, out in the open? Your technology is incredible, but,” she blew through her lips and shrugged, “It’s nothing special. Our City wants for nothing. I cannot, I will not accept this deal.”

Garrett could feel the air in the room thicken as the Baroness continued to laugh, and Ector balled his fists up in his lap, then stood up suddenly.

“Then we shall take it by force.”

“You… What?” she stood up abruptly, motioned, and the guards standing at the doors stepped in front of them so Ector was effectively trapped inside the room, “You _dare_ defy me in my own Court?”

“Ma’am, you will allow me to leave or my Masters will react with equal and opposite force against you. My carriage is waiting outside. If we do not return, they will act for me, and it will be much worse than if you had simply let me go.”

“I won’t tolerate this. Arrest him. Take his box. Store it, and I will extract information on how to use it when I’ve had some sleep.”

“You cannot-”

Bloumont span around and advanced as Ector was pulled into a hold by the guardsmen who had been stood at the door, searched his robes for the box, pulled it out, then examined it, “I will do as I see fit, and if that means ridding this City of disgusting vermin like you, then so be it,” she turned to the guardsmen and nodded, “Take him to the prisons.”

Ector went white and sagged as the guards manhandled him out of the room. He didn’t struggle, but held his head high, stiffly staring her in the eye as they left, and the room fell back into pale silence. The Baroness returned to her seat, studied the little box some more, clutched it tight in her hand, then finished off her glass of water and left. This was Garrett’s chance. The box had piqued his interest, but there was no way he was going to risk trying to take it back off her. Ector, however…

Ector was worth saving.

He’d been heading for the cells anyway.

* * *

It took Garrett much longer than it usually would have done to work his way further down into the belly of the Grand Court. In all the other parts of the City, he had worked out the patrol patterns of the Watchmen, but this was totally new territory. He picked up bits and pieces as he went, more as an exercise than a legitimate need to steal, but found no other loot of particular note. It had taken him far too long to find the courage to emerge from underneath the table, and he wasn’t about to throw all that effort away by getting too complacent.

Ector was in the cell at the far end of the prison. The cell that Linton had been held in, as per the file note and as expected, was completely empty, and the others contained men and women who looked either bored or too unwell to stand, and there was no in-between. Easy to see the favourites in a place like this. Easy to see who had the money and the means to pay her off. Garrett did himself a favour and stayed out of the light where he could. It was going to attract too much attention if he helped everyone here, and he needed to get out as quickly as possible.

By the time Garrett reached him, Ector looked thoroughly beaten up already. A black eye had already formed, a nasty dark bruise sprawled across his face, across his cheek bone and up to his ear. His nose, which looked like it had been broken, was still bleeding sluggishly. It took him a moment to register that someone was at his cell door, and even longer before he recognised Garrett himself.

He jumped. 

“M- Master Thief? It’s...” he stuttered and struggled with his words while Garrett motioned at him to keep it down from outside his cell, “It’s been so long, I… I didn’t realise you were still alive.”

“Yeah, well, here I am,” Garrett said, “Still working jobs, same old, same old. Can’t have the new Baroness upset the status quo and all.”

Ector watched him and then crawled up close as Garrett set to work on the lock on his cell door, “I’ve just been brought here, the Baroness decided to--”

“Decided to imprison you, yes, I know, I was there,” he ignored Ector’s shocked expression, “I saw the whole thing. If you just keep it down, I’ll be able to get you out and you can leave.”

“Who’s paying you?”

Garrett was distracted as he responded, his tongue poking out from in-between his teeth as he wrestled with the lock. It was new. He’d never seen this style before. “Nobody, I was here on a job and figured you could use some help.”

Ector shot him a look. “Really?”

“Really.”

The lock _clicked_ and swung open, leaving Ector free to leave. Garrett stepped aside and motioned. In the few hours between his arrest and now, his robes had already been taken off him and replaced with a coarse hessian tunic and a pair of shorts. It was far too cold to be wearing such short clothes - he shook where he stood, shivering violently.

“I… I don’t know what to say. _Thank you.”_

“Save it,” Garrett said, motioning for Ector to crouch, swinging the cell door shut behind them and leading him off, “We need to get out of here first, and I’m not going to throw myself in harm’s way for you. What were you doing here anyway?”

Ector tailed Garrett closely, kept his voice down, tried to hide the jumps and starts at each unexpected noise as they climbed the stairs, “We - the Order of the Hammer - have been rebuilding ourselves over the past few years. We figured that we could come to some agreement with the Baroness that would allow us to worship in the light again but,” he shook his head sadly, “Not going to happen.”

“And that box? The coil thing?”

Ector blew through his teeth and laughed, “That was a mere trinket, a toy. The Masters predicted that something like this might happen, and they won’t be happy for it, although it won’t damage them at all. We have much worse up in Crasgcleft.”

Garrett made an interested sound in his throat and checked for guards, then pushed on through the Court, winging it, hoping to find some unlocked window or out-of-the-way door that they could use to escape, “I won’t ask. I heard the Hammerites weren’t all that keen on thieves. You’re not exactly clean in that respect.”

“They lifted me out of darkness and helped me see the light. They sought me out and set me on the right path. I help develop all their technology now, I have been forgiven. For all your past crimes, you could be forgiven too, the Masters would be pleased to hear you helped me and led me to safety.”

They came to another door and Garrett took a quick peek through the keyhole, picked at the lock, and then led him into a smaller room with a window which had been propped open, high on the wall. “I appreciate the offer, but it’s not for me. Let’s get you out.”

He leant down and interlaced his fingers to make a step, just enough for Ector to plant a foot in Garrett’s hands and allowed himself to be lifted to the window, then scrambled out. Garrett heard shouting from the cells down below. Ector had already been spotted missing.

The air outside was crisp and cold. The day was beginning to brighten again; the pale blues of dawn were starting to creep over the horizon, and the snow had stopped falling, but still left enough covering for footsteps leading away from the Grand Court. Ector’s carriage was supposedly waiting a couple of streets over. Garrett sincerely doubted they’d have waited long enough for him, that they’d have long since left, but Ector insisted that they were still there.

“The Master Builder smiles on you, Garrett,” he said as they made their way through some bushes and out the other side so that they wouldn’t be spotted talking by Watch officers, “He showed me mercy, and he will show you it too. Thank you for your help. Really, thank you.”

This was getting weird.

“Don’t mention it,” Garrett said, to which Ector nodded, turned, and then walked off like nothing had ever happened. Garrett watched him, his mouth slightly agape in shock, and then collected himself, turned to leave, climbed the nearest building he could find and then hurried off to meet Basso.

It was well past six in the morning by the time Garrett arrived at the Crippled Burrick.

From what Garrett could tell, Basso had been pacing to and fro in his room, pale as a sheet, wringing his hands and sweating profusely. He snapped his head to the door as soon as Garrett entered, and his whole body sagged. 

“What the hell kinda time you call this?”

Garrett shrugged. “I got caught up. Nothing bad, but I caught a conversation I’m not sure I was supposed to hear, and then I had to rescue someone, but it wasn’t Linton. Remember Ector?” Basso’s eyes brightened in recognition of the name, “He was there. Said he’s been in Cragscleft for a year.”

“Working with-?”

“The Hammerites, yes.” Garrett stared at the back of his hand as he talked, “Brought her some weird glowy blue thing, I _think_ it was Primal, then asked for her to leave Cragscleft alone in return. That, and to return them the Chapel of the Old Gods, as well as some of the other chapels.”

Baso gestured. “And I’m guessing that went down well?”

“If ‘well’ means ‘arrested him and imprisoned him without trial’, then yes, it really did. She took the box anyhow. Dunno where she’s got it, but Ector said it was a dud. Just a magic trick.”

Basso scoffed and shrugged, returned to his desk and sat down, pulled what looked like some kind of form out from a desk drawer and scratched at it with a pen, “Clever taffer. And Linton?”

“Dead,” Garrett produced the file note that he’d found in the conference room and handed it to Basso, “As of days ago.”

With shaking hands, Basso took the note out of Garrett’s hands and read it through. Sighed. Nodded. “Shit. Well, at least she’s still paying us. Hope this doesn’t throw much of a spanner into the works.”

“I’m sure she’ll be fine, she still has her money. Business is business. And if she doesn’t pay up then you know the drill.”

“I do,” Basso said, seemingly more as a way of comforting himself than reassuring Garrett, “She’s smarter than that.”

 _“And,”_ Garrett continued, emptying out his pouches onto Basso’s desk, “I found some other interesting things. I guess that’s what comes out of new government buildings - they provide lots of cushy jobs. Good for us.”

“Good indeed,” Basso said, watching as the last bits and pieces were laid on the desk, and Garrett stood back, arms folded over his chest.

“I’m going to get back. It’s getting too light. If you have a job for me send Robin with a note and I’ll be back soon.”

“Aye,” Basso said distractedly, still working at the form with his pen, abacus already out on the desk, “Look after yourself. And try not to worry too much about Ector.”

Garrett looked back at Basso and tilted his head, chanced a rare smile which had Basso grinning back at him, then pulled up his scarf. “I won’t.”

He left and climbed up onto a nearby roof, slipping slightly as he went, and made a beeline for the nearby clocktower. It was cold; his hands were frozen stiff inside his gloves and the wind howled against him, pushing him back and back as he battled forward. He had been correct. It was late - too light for comfort, his eyes stung and burned with the need for sleep. When he climbed the outside of the clocktower again, still getting used to it after years of having the easy job of climbing up the inside, he found that the scaffolding was slippery and wet, froze his hands until they stuck to the wooden beams and he had to pry them away.

The sun had long since passed the horizon. He had always timed this so that there would be no Watch patrols within view when he was climbing, and still he ducked behind beams when he had to, but he was slow. Clumsy. Must be getting old. He hauled himself over the lip of the sill when he got to the top and collapsed on the other side, groaning, staring up into the ceiling. The crows stared back down at him inquisitively.

The leftovers from the previous night had kept nicely, thanks to the cold. In the summertime, he wouldn’t be able to keep them for as long as he could in winter, so he heated the stew up and sat at his desk reading until he found himself falling asleep where he sat, his head slipped down his palm and onto his forearm and his reading glasses fell off and onto the table with a clatter. He rubbed his eyes, got up, then changed into a thick shirt and shorts for sleeping, cleaned up the cooking utensils, and crawled into bed, ignoring the burnt patches forming in the centre of his vision and the ache behind his right eye.

With luck, this migraine would go away in his sleep.

He dreamed of warm, quiet, happy places.

* * *

Garrett was woken two hours later.

He wasn’t sure whether it was the migraine that woke him or the shouting and screaming from outside.

He struggled to open his eyes against the bright light that filtered in through the clock face and listened hard while he came to, frozen still in his bed. Many voices. Male. Late teens to middle aged. He listened harder. Smelled the air. Smoke?

_Smoke._

He jumped out of bed and looked up, doing his best to ignore the pounding behind his right eye. The birds in the rafters were hopping and chattering with each other distractedly, restlessly, looking up towards the hole in the roof. Maybe someone had lit a bonfire in the plaza, maybe the Baroness had thought up some new, cruel way of punishing those who crossed her and had decided to test it out now. 

He pulled on a pair of thick socks and sprinted up the stairs to the window, looked out. Nothing that he could see from this vantage point, nobody was being burned in the plaza, no houses were on fire.

But if that was the case…

A _crack_ had him turning towards the lower floor of his home. The smell of smoke was getting stronger. Black wisps had begun to ascend from the bowels of the clocktower and were collecting up in the roof.

_No._

He took the stairs back down three at a time and bolted to the barrier separating his room from the shaft of the tower and looked down. It had always been hard to see all the way down to the bottom from up here; the tower was so tall and mist and dust seemed to like to collect and obscure his view but it was darker, dirtier, more pungent. A tongue of orange flicked out from the darkness and retreated again, leaving him clutching his head in pain, irritated from the sudden flash of light.

_Crackling, bubbling, burning, snapping._

His heart leapt to his throat and he turned from the banister and looked around him. The voices from down at the bottom of the tower and the soft _whooshing_ of flames every half a minute or warned him of their presence. The couldn’t possibly be putting more fuel on the fire, could they?

There was no way he was going to be able to put this out. All he could do was run for his life.

There was a sharp, deafening crash below him. Must be one of the platforms. He bent double and pressed his hands against his ears for a moment - just a moment, trying to force himself to think, to banish the agony quickly encroaching and washing over the right side of his head, leaving him breathless in pain. Forced to his knees, he held himself rigid against the attack, quivering, stifling cries. When the episode finally washed over him, leaving him able to breathe again, he found that the air that he was taking in was now thick with smoke, made his head spin.

He spluttered. Coughed. Coughed once more. It didn’t help. Stars exploded in his vision again and again. He had to get out _now._

A small leather bag sat by the bed. Keenly aware of the fact that his feet were slowly becoming warm, he sprinted across the room, picked it up, and turned to his chest. Every movement that he made sent throbbing bolts of fire across his head and down his spine, but he persisted, grabbing his leathers, harness, cloak, stuffed them into his bag without care or regard, picked up his scarf and a cowl. A glint at the bottom of the chest caught his eye, and in a panic, he picked that up too and stuffed it in his bag. The mechanical eye, along with the plans.

Another crash. Another platform gone. Several years worth of toil gone up in literal flames. Soon, it was to be his life’s work as well. His hands were dirty with soot.

Racing back up the stairs where the air was even thicker, doing his utmost to force the ashen remains of his home from his lungs and mouth, he came to his workbench, grabbed his bow and quiver and hooked them around his back, stuffed the blackjack in his bag too, and hurried to the sink.

He soaked his scarf and cowl in water and put them on, tucking them underneath the collar of his shirt. His hands were dry, parched. It made his skin crawl. His mouth and eyes were no better. The stink worked its way up his nose and down his throat, his lungs burned and stung. He headed to the window, readjusting the positioning of his bag and the bow, and took one step up onto the window sill. Cold prickled in his feet and his bare arms. The scaffolding around the edge of the clocktower was still icy and slippery, lethal.

Garrett wasn’t sure if he’d actually heard the _crack_ when it happened, just as he was about to take the step onto the nearest beam. Another had him looking around wildly, searching for the source. He thought it was the fire raging behind and below him at first, but a _flick_ of wood as it skittered off the stonework and tumbled back down to the ground below had him casting off to the side, hiding himself just behind the lip of the window and looking down through the aura.

The tower was surrounded with crossbowmen, all looking up towards him, their weapons trained on the tower from all different directions. 

He blinked, hard. Tried to swallow the dry throat away. There was no way he was going to be able to survive the fire inside the clocktower. He couldn’t simply crawl underneath his workbench and will it away, as much as he wanted. The Watchmen were hardly a crack shot to begin with, poorly trained, overworked and underpaid, but there were so many of them.

So many.

He resisted the urge to cry.

It was entirely possible that he’d be able to move between the scaffolding so that they wouldn’t be able to hit him, but what about when he got closer to the ground? What about when it became point blank? His eyes drifted back to the workbench and he hurried over again, glancing in terror at the flames that had now begun to spring up and lick around the banisters on the floor below. He reached around, his vision severely impaired by migraine and smoke, and his hands came to rest on a couple of flash bombs.

It was going to hurt.

Really hurt.

But it would have to do. There was no other way.

He thanked all the gods for the protective barrier that the soaked mask offered him from the smoke and hopped back onto the window, shielding himself once again with the stone frame and planned his route. Time almost seemed like it had slowed. Which way down?

There was a groan. Crackling and splintering and _roaring_ and he turned his head only just quick enough to see a chunk of the lower floor appear to dissolve and tumble down into the thick darkness of the tower and break into a million tiny pieces at the bottom. Smoke and red hot sparks spewed up into the air, latched themselves onto the machinery above where they caught fire too.

All the birds had long since disappeared.

He reached out without thinking. Grabbed the closest beam of scaffolding he could find, his hands roaming, reaching for the best grip he could find, now almost completely blinded. He closed his fingers around it, his lungs screaming in thanks for the slightly cleaner air, and _jumped_. 

His socks skidded on the ice. He gripped the beam as close to his chest as he possibly could, held it harder than he’d ever held anything in his life and looked around him, searching through the fog and the flashing from the migraine for some way down.

The breathy _whoosh_ of a steel-tipped bolt had him reeling and then holding on even tighter, and a split second later it clattered against the stonework and fell down into the plaza below. Garrett held his head in his hand, willing his head to stop pounding for long enough to find a safe way down.

He looked up only just long enough to see the Baroness and the Watch Commander Chiron Cirrin standing side-by-side, watching him intently. It was only a moment that he studied them for before another bolt whizzed past his shoulder and he swung down to a lower beam, slipped even further, lost his grip and then regained it.

There was shouting down below him. As if that made his head any better. He glared down at them and shimmied across to a particularly sheltered area and took a few seconds to breathe, and then found his way further down, further, further.

All the while, he was bringing himself to the wrong side of the crossbows. All the while, the shots were getting more and more accurate. Each woosh became louder as they grazed his shoulder, his knee, his ear. The air warped around each one and made him jump and start. All the while, the shouting and yelling and screaming were getting louder.

Looking upwards, he found black smoke pouring from the windows in his tower, rising high up into the sky, the crackling and crashing of ruined wood, _pops_ of shattering glass, the whooshing of heat and smoke and the flickering bubbling tongue of red hot fire too loud. He wished he could cover his ears. Couldn’t. He looked down. Dropped to the next level again, forcing away the bubbling, nauseating heat in his stomach. Continued to cough but found it did little to scrub the effects of the smoke from his insides.

Closer, closer, closer. 

He took a moment to dip behind another column and took off his bag, opened it with shaking hands and rummaged around clumsily. He was getting close. He had only managed to get his hands on three flash bombs, so he knew he’d need to time it right or all of this would have been for nothing. His hand closed on a heavy, metal object, ribbed, rounded at each end and he pulled it out, studied it against the light best he could.

A fresh round of pain nearly knocked him off the beam, so he gripped onto the column again, resting the right side of his head on it in an attempt to banish the pain, to save himself. Another bolt flew past, drawing him from his daze. One last, deep breath. Two more levels down and he would be ready.

His feet were clumsy and heavy as he descended further still. Everything hurt so much. His lungs felt like they were about to collapse. The crossbowmen were close enough now. He’d have to gain momentum or else he’d never get started again.

He placed his hands on the beam and straightened himself. Prepared the flash bombs. 

Propelled himself forward and then _flung_ the thing as hard as he could.

_Whiteness screaming agony._

The world exploded.

Garrett had experienced some painful things in his life. This rivalled for number one with torture. Quite possibly eclipsed it. Seemed like it did in the moment anyway. He sailed through the air and past the guards, yes. He got past them. He didn’t land on his feet.

The guards screamed and recoiled and fell to the ground. Garrett landed on the tiles next to the railing, tripped over his feet, and crumpled to the floor too, temporarily stunned by his own flash bomb. His head collided sharply with grey slate tile making the world spin. He stared down into the stony coldness but saw only whiteness and heard only screaming. Something in the back of his brain yelled at him to _get up, get moving, save yourself_ but he remained stuck, face down. He vaguely registered the taste of blood in his mouth.

He faded in and out for what felt like a long time but must have been only seconds.

It must have been only by the grace of the gods that he finally managed to collect himself enough to pick himself up and start stumbling away again.

His entire head was splitting open, in half, and here he was, shuffling away from several tens of men equipped with deadly crossbows because he was mad enough to pull a stunt like that. He might even have got away.

_Had he made it?_

He wasn’t quite sure.

His entire vision was still blown, ears still ringing with the deafening bang which reverberated still around his head. He was lucky that he knew the City well enough to approximate a mental map and use that to work out the best way to go. He continued. He wasn’t sure where he was going, but he was going to find safety if it killed him.

Ha. Funny.

He climbed up onto a low, sloping roof and continued, shaking and shivering and aching yet pushed himself onwards because _fuck if he was going to die after everything he’d been through._ Dropped down onto the ground, to his knees, and dry-heaved. There were footsteps. Raised voices.

Picked himself up and took off into a staggering run then hauled himself up onto another roof.

This was stupid. The whole thing was stupid. He couldn’t see a damn thing. He was freezing. Shivering. The sharp corner of a wall guided him. He came across another roof and his feet slipped out from underneath him, he pitched down, landed nastily on his hip, cried out harshly, followed the slope of the roof and then skidded off the edge, flailing wildly, grabbing and scrabbling for anything that might be able to support him or halt his descent. He wasn’t sure how high up he was. He wasn’t sure how far the fall might be.

Then blackness.

He didn’t remember hitting the floor.

He wasn’t sure exactly how long he’d been out for when he came to, but the Watch hadn’t found him and he was still looking up into the cool grey sky. Snow had begun to fall lazily in fat white clumps and stuck to his eyelashes and lips as he opened his eyes and tried to look around. Was it snow, or was it ash? He wasn’t quite sure. A slip of paper, singed at the edges floated down, and as it descended, he recognised his own handwriting. So much for those blueprints and plans. For a moment his body refused to respond, all attempts at lifting his head and arms off the ground completely futile, so he started small, flexing and extending his fingers first on his right side and then his left. No problems there then. 

He felt some small warmth seep its way back into his body as he woke up. His migraine still pounded in the far reaches of his vision. He supposed, in some strange sense, that that might be a good thing. Better to deal with crippling migraine than head damage, which he had read was unpredictable and could cause life-altering problems. He could see fine now, the white flash from the flash bomb had dissipated, and save for the flickery aura ebbing in his peripherals there were no other visual disturbances, no double vision, no severe confusion…

He took a moment to collect himself, then slowly, slowly propped himself up on his elbows and looked around. The fall hadn’t been that bad, although he wasn’t sure how he’d found himself here, in the Gullet of all places. It was quite a long way from the clocktower, he’d had to have been quick, unless the flash bombs had done a lot more damage than he’d anticipated. They’d certainly had his own vision blown for a very long time.

He rolled onto his side and forced himself not to vomit, clutching his stomach and holding his breath, waited for his heart to stop pounding. As much as he wanted to cry out in pain, here was not the best place to do it. He needed a plan. The smell of smoke still hung heavy in the air and the yell of the the Watchmen and the Commander carried clear across the district. 

As he tried to climb to his feet, an excruciating bolt of pain shot up his ankle and into the bottom of his shin. Gripping the wall, he hissed through his teeth and tested it again, stepping carefully on it. It felt hot underneath his socks, and taking a closer look, he found it bruised and swollen and twisted. Most likely not broken. Just painfully sprained.

This had been a nightmare of a day and it wasn’t even noon yet, judging by the sun.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he just climbed up on top of one of the roofs and curled up for the rest of the day and sorted it all out when it was darker and he was safer?

There was a ladder just above him. He eyed it carefully, and then thought better of it. There was no way he’d make it up there without falling again. He sank to his knees.

Basso was probably his best shot right now, but there were too many Watchmen roaming, it was too light, he was too weak to stand, let alone run or crouch. He didn’t have a chance right now.

There was a table to his right - Ector’s old workbench. It had rotted and partially collapsed over the years, but there were still blocks of wood, tools, flower pots available. It would do.

He crawled underneath the workbench and covered the area in front of it to shadow himself, to give himself some small respite until night fell and he found himself able to find proper shelter without running a serious risk of getting himself killed. He turned away from the light of the day. The snow fell heavier and coated his surroundings in a bright, cold white sheet. He set his bow and quiver just in front of him and pulled the leathers and cloak out of his bag, covered himself in them best he could to banish the shivers wracking his body, and then threw them off again when the hot flushes presented.

The day passed slowly. 

Once, twice, and then three times Watchmen appeared in the Gullet, shouting and screaming and brandishing their weapons, waking him from his state of not-quite-there and then disappeared, each time failing to spot the pool of shadow that emerged from the bottom of the bench. Each time he clasped his head to his chest, covered his ears, drew in his legs and took one shuddering breath after another until they were gone, and then he’d be back to tossing and turning.

His fingers and toes slowly went numb. Holding them in his armpits and between his legs did little to help after a while. He found himself dreaming of warmth and water when he did drift into fitful sleep, waking disappointed, cold, his mouth dry. He wondered if Basso were out looking for him, if he’d seen the fire, if he’d known that his home had been surrounded by crossbowmen. Had he even seen Garrett making his escape? If he had, then surely he would have found him by now? Or maybe not. Maybe Basso had been hauled off for questioning too.

Garrett wasn’t sure how any of this had happened. Maybe he _had_ left it too late and some patrolling guard had seen him climb up the outside of the tower and reported it? It was an entirely plausible explanation. He doubted that there was anyone close enough to him who’d give the Watch information, who’d know where he lived. That information was strictly limited to Basso (and Erin when she’d been around).

It couldn’t possibly have been Erin, could it?

No. It couldn’t. There was no way she’d have appeared out of nowhere to tell Bloumont and Cirrin where he lived. She wasn’t motivated by money, she could steal what and when she liked. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that the Baroness and the General had ordered an attack on his home the same day he’d been taking risks and climbing up the outside and into his home in broad daylight. How stupid had he been? Why hadn’t he just asked to sleep on Basso’s couch for the day? He’d gotten complacent from years and years of not having to worry about it.

But berating himself would do nothing. It was done now.

Instead, he watched the light level on the stone wall underneath the table slowly fall to an acceptable level, then dragged himself out from underneath, finding his cheek sticking to the tiled floor from the cold. He stuffed everything back into his bag, hooked the bow and quiver to his back, and then crawled out, stumbled to his feet.

Everything was numb. His head still threatened to split open. His ankle screamed at him but still he continued. Staggered across the clocktower plaza, hiding in shadow when he could but not always finding it possible. He took breaks often, and leaned heavily against a crate and then crawled behind it when three stray Watchmen hurried past. Looking up at his clocktower, he found it still ablaze, although the fire had become more black smoke than orange tongue. It was partially collapsed. Made unpleasant crackling and groaning noises, each sending spikes of pain through his eye. It felt almost perverse looking at the damage from down here, like he was intruding on something he shouldn’t, although it was _all_ to do with him; it was - had been - his home. All of that comfort and work, all of those memories, good and bad, had been torn from him in less than twelve hours. The prospect made him want to scream, to cry, to lash out, to _kill._ He wouldn’t. He would never. But that didn’t stop him vividly imagining putting an arrow through their throats.

Instead, he found his way safely to the Crippled Burrick. Basso was not there. Garrett peeked in through the windows - found all the lights off and nobody home, so he reconsidered, and then continued down Mourningside, gripping the wall as he went. It felt like (very well might have been) the longest, most painful walk that he had ever had to endure, but still he pressed on, limped through the agony of his sprained ankle which was still swollen, knowing that he wouldn’t be safe until he found shelter. 

The braziers at the side of the path had been long extinguished, and emitted neither heat nor smoke. The beggars had fled. To stay outside any longer would be a death sentence. He marched on. It was so quiet. In the furthest reaches of his mind, he rejoiced; the silence had such a soothing effect on his head that he was tempted to simply lie down and freeze to death on the ground, but he _couldn’t_ give up. Not now. Not ever.

It was _too long_ before he found himself in the graveyard, and then shortly after, the Chapel. Snow covered the tops of the headstones as he stumbled through the darkness, his hand clamped tightly over his right eye. Not far now. All the candles had been extinguished. The offerings were gone. It was completely barren, but why that was the case was a mystery. Had the Queen of Beggars evacuated? He hoped not; he wasn’t sure he’d make it back up and out if he descended all those steps to a cold, empty room. Maybe she’d just brought everyone inside? Hidden them from the fury of the Watch. Or maybe they’d all simply been dragged off to the prisons?

He leaned close to the wall as he descended. It was warmer down here. Light. He sighed in relief. Hundreds of beggars lined the walls, and in the centre of the room sat the Queen on her plush throne. It had been _years_ since Garrett had seen her, yet it seemed like she hadn’t aged a day. Although her pupils were lined with what looked like advanced cataracts leaving her undoubtedly blind, she still seemed to sense Garrett’s presence and looked in his direction as he descended. Raised her head and then tilted it. A couple of beggars followed her lead and stared Garrett down like guard dogs as he approached.

He didn’t have time for this. He didn’t have the capacity or the desire to make himself look big like he did as a last resort when he felt threatened and had nowhere to run. Instead, he limped forward, forward, the last few steps suddenly more exhausting than the rest of the walk, and then tripped over his feet and came to rest at the Queen’s feet. 

She appeared to be observing him as he approached, and when he did fall, she took a moment to lean down, cupped his cheek in her palm. The warmth flooded through him and only now did he realise that he was shivering. Or maybe it had been that the relative warmth of the room that had kicked that area of his brain into action, and with it flooded back the nausea and the burning pinpricks in his vision and the throbbing bolts up his ankle. He moaned in pain.

“It takes a special someone to suffer through that much pain and live,” she said, withdrawing and motioning for one of her assistants to retrieve a blanket from a nearby dresser, “But clearly the gods have another plan for you.”

He curled in on himself as the beggars tucked the blanket around him and he clutched it to his chest, under his chin and he shivered violently until his back muscles seized. The urge to vomit overcame him and he frantically shuffled to a nearby bucket and retched until what little had been left in his stomach had all been expelled. He curled around the bucket and held his hands over his head, still as he could possibly manage, unwilling to exacerbate the migraine further.

“You and this City are truly connected now. You feel her pain. Does she feel yours?”

He didn't fucking know. He didn't want to think about it. How could he _possibly_ think about anything but the pain and the hot flushes now rolling over him in waves? It was almost like the cold of the outside had muted the suffering somewhat, but now, that was gone. Here, he’d have to face it head-on.

The Queen continued to talk, but whatever it was that she was saying, Garrett wasn’t quite sure. Somewhere along the line, she stopped and his world closed in considerably. His thoughts bounced to and fro, disjointed, making little sense, feverish, and he clutched the bucket tightly in his hands. At some point, someone took it away from him, only to return it what felt like hours later, and he brought up bile again. The light underneath the chapel gradually increased again, and somebody was trying to push a cup of something into his hands. He refused. Shook his head weakly and pushed it away, so the pair of hands - or the person they belonged to - left.

Some time later they reappeared, and again he refused.

It had been twenty-four hours since he’d had anything to drink.

Dreams became fevered nightmares as his state slowly declined on the chapel floor. Vomiting turned to bile and then painful dry-heaving as there was nothing left to bring up. On the third time, severely dehydrated and desperate, he took the cup from the offerer’s hands and drank - tentative at first but the moment the water touched his tongue, sipping became greedy consumption. He came up disappointed when the cup ran dry, and the hands took it back off him and returned hours later when he would take it all in one again. There was no point at which what they offered him enough, but somewhere in the back of his mind it seemed to make sense. He would be in a worse position if he simply vomited this back up too.

Someone was crying. Whether this was him or someone else underneath the chapel was a mystery. Some time later he found another cup offered to him, but it smelled bitter and familiar and _wrong_. Smelled like that time he’d been _strongly encouraged_ to drink it by Corvo and been reduced to a gibbering wreck. Poppy. He pushed that away too. Then wished he hadn’t.

Didn’t stop him pushing it away when he was offered it again, out of habit.

Of course.

He understood that it would help. That it would sedate him and, with luck, banish some of the pain. Maybe make him more capable of sleeping soundly, have a shot at restoring _some_ of his energy. Another sharp spike had him gripping the bucket and his bag tightly. This time, when it was offered, he took it and forced it down.

It did help, somewhat. 

The pain didn’t disappear completely but faded to a manageable level; just enough to allow him to sleep until the sun set, and when he woke he was feeling significantly better. He slept some more, taking him well into the next day, when the sun was shining brightly on the floor in front of him, and his fingers were warmed by a nearby brazier. He drifted in and out for even longer, and then dragged himself back to consciousness, wrung-out and exhausted, but awake. Almost pain free - for now. It was like he’d just woken from a bad dream. His sprained ankle had been bandaged for support while he had been insensible, and he looked at it for a moment, studied the tight wrappings before pulling the sock back over it.

Slowly, slowly, he shuffled himself up on his elbows and looked around. The beggars that had been there earlier had all gone, leaving just three or four scattered around the room. The Queen of Beggars was nowhere to be found, yet he had managed to maintain his clutches on his bag, bow and quiver. It was true, there was honour amongst thieves; don’t steal from each other and don’t steal from the poor, and this courtesy had seemingly been extended back to him. He got up. Bent double as stars exploded in his vision from the hours and hours of being laid on the ground, and he willed himself not to fall over. 

As soon as it had come, it went away again.

He gathered himself and re-hooked the bow and quiver and bag around his bag and crept back up the stairs, covering his eyes, hiding them from the light which bore into the back of his eye sockets like knives. And there she was, sat in her usual chair out the front of the chapel facing the graveyard, face pensive, the shock of silver hair shining brightly in the afternoon light. There wasn’t even any point in trying to creep past her; she knew where he was anyway. She _always knew._ So instead, he went and sat on one of the pews, slouched forwards, his face in his hands.

It was a long time before she said anything.

“On the day that they burned your clocktower to the ground, I sensed that something had changed in this City.”

No surprises there then. He waited for her to continue, head still draped forward, supported by his hands, his stomach sickeningly empty.

“The Watch Commander and his men came straight for this chapel, threatened to burn it just like they did your home. I assured them that I was not hiding you, but still he did not listen,” she paused and stirred a cup of tea, dropped two lumps of sugar in, and continued, “He searched the whole place and could not find you. Two-hundred and fifty-three beggars he checked the faces of individually. He searched everywhere. And you turned up several hours later, having evaded him by hiding under a _bench_.” 

Her voice had a strange quality, some hint of light amusement, like she was about to laugh but still remained calm and collected.

Garrett still didn’t respond, but finally looked up at her and linked his fingers under his chin, rocking slightly where he sat. He wasn’t sure how she knew where he’d been hiding, but he was hardly in a state to ask questions now. He tasted the inside of his mouth and then wished he hadn’t. He was still greasy from sweat.

“You are a remarkable man, Garrett. Your talents are vastly under-appreciated for what they are, but it could quite easily be said that it’s better for everyone that those talents aren’t put to official use. You should consider very carefully your next course of action. Whatever that choice is, however, I hope it brings you peace and prosperity. I fear you will not find it here.”

Of course. Always helpful. His voice was rough and hoarse from smoke-damaged lungs and two days of on-and-off screaming in pain. “I suspect not.” 

She took a sip of her tea and continued. “I think your friend Basso has been looking for you. You should see him. He is worried.”

_Basso._

Of course.

He must have seen the whole thing. From what he had seen two nights before, the plaza was covered in burnt rubble and smouldering ash, the remains of his collections, his work, his contraptions, his _home_ strewn out for all to see. If he had died in that fire, would it have even been possible to recover him? He pictured Basso, frantic, searching through the debris for a slim, pale hand, a finger, a foot, anything to identify to give him some sort of funeral. It would have been what Basso would have done, anyway. A sentence floated through his mind, something that Basso had told him six years prior while begging him not to endanger himself.

_“I don’t want to have to be the one scraping your remains off the floor or watching you hang in the plaza.”_

And that was exactly what Basso had been doing - or thought he had been doing. Garrett got up abruptly and excused himself without saying goodbye. She watched him descend through the graveyard steps and then make a sharp turn left. 

They both knew that they were unlikely to meet ever again.

* * *

Basso looked like he’d seen a ghost when he opened his door to Garrett standing awkwardly in the night.

Then he dragged him in over the threshold and hit him across the arm, causing Garrett to flinch away. There was no venom in his actions. His eyes were red and puffy, and the room stank of alcohol and tobacco smoke. Robin was sat on Jenivere’s old perch, preening herself and studying Garrett with her beady little eyes.

Only when the door was closed did Basso finally round on Garrett, dark fury blazing in his eyes.

“I thought you were _dead,”_ Basso said, his voice harsh and cracked and quiet when he finally found the words and the strength to shout at him, “I spent _all day_ looking through that rubble in the plaza. I risked my life to check the prison and execution records. And you’re turning up _two days later_ like nothin’s happened at all?”

Garrett shrugged. What else could he say? He’d got here as soon as it was feasible, and the fact that Basso had been out of his house earlier wasn’t exactly his fault.

“You’re just gonna… you’re gonna shrug at me like that? Like this ain’t important?” he scoffed and turned away for a second, dragging his hand down over his mouth distractedly and huffing, “Garrett, I was worried _sick_. Literally, I was sick because I thought you were dead. I was out of my mind. I _can’t_ keep running around after you worrying about this I can’t-” he cut himself off harshly as his voice cracked and pressed the hand into the corners of his eye, turning away from Garrett again as his voice thinned out considerably and hitched, “I can’t. I can’t do it.”

Basso had never cried in front of Garrett before. He didn’t seem the type. He’d been in some _bad_ situations with the Watch before, he’d had thieves severely injured and killed on the job, but not once had Basso cried. Never. He’d become angry and withdrawn, of course, the smell of spirits in the cellar of the Burrick became stronger, he isolated himself and focused to excess on his work, but he’d never cried. Yet here he was, stood in front of Garrett, tears spilling over the top of the hand he had pressed over his mouth and nose. Garrett shifted his weight from foot to foot, unsure of what to do next.

The sounds of stifled, bitten-off sobs cut through the air like knives. Basso turned and looked over at Garrett mournfully, clutching the pipe that hung around his neck.

Although he wasn’t one for close contact at all, and would never have done so in any other situation, Garrett approached Basso and patted him awkwardly on the back, rubbing a thumb up and down as his breath hitched, and, unexpectedly, Basso turned and pulled Garrett in. The sudden movement shocked Garrett, and he froze for a moment, unsure of what to do, whether to break from the hug or to put up with it, then decided to stay. He rubbed his hand up and down his back again, his arms stiff and awkward from trying not to make too much contact, and there they stood, embracing for several minutes while Basso slowly regained control of his voice and lungs again.

“They know you’re still out there. They’re trying to close down all the ports but ships are still being turned away. The bridges into Auldale and Cinderfall are blocked off. You need to get out of here one way or another.”

Garrett considered. It was true, the Watch had doubled down on their search for him. He had nowhere to go. He couldn’t stay at the Burrick, because at even the faintest hint of Basso sheltering Garrett, Cirrin would have them both executed. He _could_ stay in the Our Lady chapel, but was he willing to give up all of his privacy like that? He would be living in the same space as so many other people at once. The very thought made him anxious. Nowhere truly safe to live, cook, sleep, store his belongings. He _supposed_ he could possibly find some abandoned house and hole up in it, but even then, how long would it be until the Watch found him again? Would he be so lucky next time?

He didn’t want to leave all of this behind, but he didn’t see any other way forward. It was too unsafe. Made it dangerous for his only friend in the world. Although self-sacrifice had never been his forte (see: not something he had ever considered before, ever), it almost seemed pertinent given the situation. The gut reaction and emotion was similar to the one he had felt when Erin had been taken from him, and she’d been giving him hints as to where she was.

“But what about you?” Garrett asked, now genuinely concerned for Basso’s safety, “Are you going to get out too? You aren’t going to last much longer with this Black Tax.”

“I have every plan to, after today,” Basso said, pacing distractedly, “But I have to get some things in order. I need to make sure my thieves are going to be okay. And I want to make sure there’s nothing I can do about Erin before I go. And _then_ I’ll start packing up.”

Garrett nodded. He had never expected that it would come to this, but maybe it was temporary. Perhaps someone in the City, maybe one of the remaining rich people from Auldale, would become so enraged by Bloumont’s actions that she would wind up dead. There were assassins aplenty in the City. The bounty must be incredible. But even if it were to happen then and there, it would be too little, too late. He had to go. Nowhere else to stay. There was no other option.

“You going to let me know where you end up when you get there?” Basso asked, his voice suddenly very quiet.

“Yeah. I promise. I’ll send a message or something.”

“You’d better do,” Basso said, once again looking tearful, “You’d better tell me what you’re up to or I’ll worry. Garrett, I… You look like shit. Will you please eat something before you go? I’ll get you something hot from the Burrick. Please?” he looked truly desperate, his face pale and eyes wide. 

Garrett relented. Nodded. Although he wasn’t what could be called hungry, his stomach still protested from the emptiness. Basso returned minutes later with a bowl of stew, like the one he had offered Garrett on the night that he had returned from the _Dawn’s Light_ , and took a spoon himself, reassuring Garrett it was safe to eat. Basso knew him too well. Garrett choked down what he could of the stew until Basso looked less worried, and then looked down to his bag.

“Do you mind if I change here? The shirt and shorts get cold in this weather.”

Basso’s eyes widened. “Yeah, sure, of course, let me just…” he stood up abruptly, turned and grabbed a tin of tobacco from his desk and left the room, clearly having gone to stand outside and smoke. Garrett struggled with the leathers, still weak from his two days of hell, but feeling slightly better, and laced up the harness at the side. Clipped on his gloves. Readjusted his hood and mask. 

When Basso came back in, his eyes were red and puffy again, but Garrett made no mention of it. There was no doubt in his mind that Basso was probably embarrassed and likely didn’t want to talk about it, so he nodded at him and Basso looked him up and down.

“You’d never think things had gone so wrong, would you?” he asked, “You look just like you did every other night. If I ever hear you’ve got yourself into trouble, I’ll come to… wherever it is you’re going and kill you myself, you understand?” he approached and pulled Garrett into another close hug and slapped him on the back.

“We’ll meet again.” Garrett assured him, after they finally pulled away and he’d brushed himself off awkwardly. He looked around for the door as Basso wiped his eyes again, looked for Watchmen marching past the Burrick, for trouble brewing. No sign. He turned.

Basso stopped himself and turned sharply. Retrieved a few small packages of food from underneath his desk and bundled them into Garrett’s arms as he stood awkwardly in front of the door, “Take these. Not much, but it might help. Good luck, Garrett. I wish you the best.”

Garrett nodded at him again, gave him a smile, and packed them into the bag which was now nearly full to bursting. The sleeping clothes that he had been wearing earlier sat in a small heap at the bottom, along with the mechanical eye and the plans, the blackjack, everything else he had managed to salvage from his home. He briefly considered searching the wreckage himself, and then quickly decided against it. Although the thought was tempting, it was too dangerous. He gave Basso one last glance before leaving, swinging the door shut behind him, and making south for the docks.

* * *

A single boat sat lonely on the horizon.

Garrett watched it cut through the fog as it docked, only to be swarmed by Watchmen, warning them to turn around and leave immediately. None of them spotted him as he ducked below the jetty and picked his way carefully across the slimy stonework. He waited until the boatmen had had their discussion with the Watch, and then gripped tight onto the lower side of the ship as it sailed off, his figure obscured by the water.

Being so cold, it wasn’t long before they went down below board to warm up, and Garrett climbed his way up and up and onto the deck.

Now, it would only be a question of where he could find a warm place to sleep. The thought of sea sickness hung heavy on his mind, but he tried his best to brush it off, and searched for a way below deck. Surely there must be something - a cleaning cupboard, a boiler room, a space under someone’s bunk, anything.

He tried a nearby door with a wheel lock and found that it slipped to the left easily, leaving the door hanging wide open. He hid himself carefully in the shadows as he worked his way further into the bowels of the ship, hiding from the crewmen that passed. The place _stank_ of fish. It made his stomach roil even now, not even fifteen minutes into the voyage. He ducked into nearby shadows as two men passed, talking excitedly of their destination.

He picked up on only one word.

“Dunwall.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing is awkward but I'm too lazy to fix. You get the idea.
> 
> I did away with the idea of another oneshot and decided to incorporate it into House of Pandora. I'm most of the way through writing the first chapter for that, so should be out by the end of the month.


End file.
